


Animighty Animorphs

by Cheating_Jumper



Series: Jumpchain [6]
Category: Animorphs, Jumpchain
Genre: Other, Still writing this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2019-09-25 06:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17115941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheating_Jumper/pseuds/Cheating_Jumper
Summary: Jumper gains the ability to morph any animal with organic DNA by going to a setting he (really she this Jump, but he for now) hasn't thought of for ages. But before he does, he reunites with an old friend





	1. Old Friends and New Jumps

**Author's Note:**

> I like the alliteration of the title and make no apologies for it
> 
> I do apologise for this not being a complete part of the story yet, I’m still working on it and will keep posting a few chapters now and then until I’m done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it’s not done yet but I figured I'd post what I've got so far before I'm consumed by the holidays

“Lille?!” I repeated, completely gobsmacked. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, you did invite me to come along a few minutes ago,” she said, completely innocent. 

“Yes, but... How did you get there? I thought you were in Alola!” I was doing my best to stay calm, but this kind of shock can put anyone off their rhythm. 

“I invited her,” came Chan’s voice from behind me. I spun around to look at her and she continued, “I did say I had someone special in mind for your partner. I’ll give you two a couple of hours to get settled, then you can come see me for your next Jump”

As she faded into the foreground and I turned back to talk to  ~~Pixie~~  Lillie, another voice called out through the Warehouse, one I didn’t recognise but was still somehow familiar

“Dad! Dad! Dad is back!”

Now I know for a fact that I have no children, the closest thing I have to a kid is Evil, or maybe the ‘mon. Wait...

“Dad back! Dad back! Dad back!” Sparkles chanted, prancing around me in circles. “Sparkles good boy! Dad play with Sparkles?”

I patted the yellow fox-dog’s head as he pressed his face against my midsection, and I realised that I had completely forgotten about the Pokéglot perk I’d just picked up. 

“You are a good boy, Sparkles. We’ll play later, ok?” I said to him a little absently. 

“Ok! Sparkles will sit!” And sit he did, on my foot, preventing me from moving. He didn’t seem to find anything odd about me now being able to understand him, but then again I did tend to assume that that’s pretty much what he was saying most of the time already. 

A moment later there was a THUD right by me, and Gladys wrapped her arms around me

“I’m glad you’re back Master” she said quietly. Her voice was like silk over gravel, with a heavy dose of bass. I felt her voice just as much as I heard it. 

“Master? I’m, uh, I’m not too comfortable being called Master” I said, patting her arm. “Maybe Boss or just Jumper instead?”

“You never objected before” she said, sounding a little confused and worried. “I didn’t know it was a problem. I’m sorry”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright baby,” I said, putting my arms around her to reassure my great ghostly golem. “It’s just I didn’t understand before. My last Jump let me talk Pokémon. Now we can have proper conversations, sound good?”

She nodded and I kissed the top of her head. 

“You go talk to the others for a few minutes, I just need to chat with Lillie for a bit. I’ll see you soon Gladys” I said once she finally let go of me. 

She silently agreed and took off, the blast of energy surrounding and coming from her legs sounded like a distant jet and... that’s interesting... the energy being used to power the Golurk felt like the same energy that went through me during evolution. I wonder if whoever created the first Goletts and Golurks were also responsible for unlocking the evolution of other Pokémon? 

 

Wait. No. Stop. That thought can wait until later. Focus. Don’t get distracted by every shiny new idea that dangles before your mind. We’ll think about it later, and we’ll find out if the rest of my team are fully sapient or just intelligent animals later as well. For now, we need to focus. 

“Okay, so, Lillie. How did you come to be Pixie?” I asked, very calmly I thought, but I guess my voice had an edge to it because Lillie flinched a little. Despite her growth over the decade and a bit I spent with her, she’s still uncomfortable with confrontation. The main difference though is that now she’ll stand her ground rather than meekly accept her treatment. I’m so proud of my friend. 

She bowed her head for a sec, then steeled herself and looked me in the eye. “It was just after you gave me your Pokémon, for half a second you seemed to disappear, then everything froze. That woman, Miss Chan, appeared and asked me if I wanted to travel with you. When I said yes, she explained that I’d lose my memory for a while, but I’d still fundamentally be me, and after this adventure I’d get to join you.” She reached for a pocket in her skirt and pulled out a brace of shrunk pokéballs. “She even let me bring along our Pokémon!”

She smiled broadly and infectiously, causing me to smile back. 

“I am really glad to see you again” I said, and held out my arms to her, still unable to move with the jolly Jolteon on my foot, so I TK’d her over to me and caught her in a hug, which caused a squeak of surprise and a giggle of pleasure. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

We headed over to where the other Pokémon were waiting for us, and were greeted by a mixed chorus of “Dad!” and “Boss!”. I’m glad Gladys explained my No “Master” policy, but I guess Chazza and Archie saw me as more of a father figure than the others. 

Lillie had the six Pokémon she brought with her - Nebby the Lunala, Sally the Salazzle, Cuddles the Bewear, Toddles the Pangoro, Borealis the Aurorus, and Granita the Dusk Lycanroc - come out of their pokéballs as well so everyone could be reacquainted with each other. 

Apart from Sparkles and Granita, they all seemed to be fully sapient; although whether that was how they always were or if they had been uplifted somewhat, I wasn’t sure. And as for the two non-sapient ‘mon, they were about as smart as dogs. Intelligent dogs, yes, but dogs nonetheless. 

Borealis and Toddles didn’t seem to resent being left behind with Lillie, but they were happy to be back with their proper mast—... boss. Proper boss. They all seemed to trip over the word change a little, seemingly unused to the difference in terminology. 

I thought about trying to explain the difference, but I decided against it for now. Trying to explain the traces of white guilt over racist bullshit that pervaded, and in some places almost defined, my world of origin, the InFamous world, and likely many worlds to come, it seemed like too heavy a topic for the ones who came from such a lighthearted world. Instead, I handwaved it away for now, promising to explain it all later if they still didn’t understand. 

 

 

All too soon we had to stop playing around, or at least I did, as I was unceremoniously yanked backwards by the nape of my neck. I fell back and landed on my bum in Chan’s stone chamber. 

“Sorry about that, but your time’s up” said Chan, standing over my head and helping me up. “You really need to pay more attention to the time limit you’re given, especially in this next Jump”

Rubbing the bump on the back of my head, I looked at the tablet she handed me and let out a bark of laughter. 

“Animorphs? You’re kidding me! I haven’t read those in years! I loved this series when I was a kid!” I grinned and sat on the couch that Chan summoned for the two of us. “I lost track of the series when I got into Discworld, but I reread the whole thing a couple years before you drafted me. Oh this is gonna be good”

I did the mandatory Coin Flip of Gender, maintaining my perfect 50/50 ratio by ending up a female again, then spun the Age Roulette, landing on 16. Could be worse I suppose, the wheel went down to 13, after all. 

There wasn’t a location choice, I’d just get put down near an abandoned construction site where an alien centaur was about to give the power to change into animals to a bunch of human teenagers. 

Straight away, I have an opportunity where my out of universe knowledge and powers could make things interesting. Would I be able to get to Elfangor before Visser Three did? Or if I couldn’t, would I be able to dig down far enough to where he had buried the Time Matrix?

As soon as I thought the words ‘Time Matrix’, the screen started flashing with red lights and a klaxon screamed at me. 

“Aha! I was wondering how soon you’d get to that” Chan grinned, standing over me and leaning on the back of the couch. “The Time Matrix is strictly off limits to all Jumpers, as well as their Companions, pets, AI’s, constructs (including, but not limited to, biological, digital, magical, mechanical, mental, and/or spiritual), sentient or sapient objects, alternate personalities, and entities bribed, blackmailed, coerced, convinced, mind controlled, brainwashed, threatened and/or seduced to use it on behalf of the Jumper or any aforementioned associates of the Jumper. Any attempts to use the Time Matrix will result in its removal, as well as a severe scolding.” 

Her eyes lit up at the mention of scolding, and it made me wonder exactly what kind of scolding a Nigh Omnipotent Being like her could give. Probably something that would make Sauron and Cthulhu promise to be good and play nicely with the mortals. What it would do to a mortal... Best not go down that road. 

Then there were the Backgrounds. Drop In, Classmate, Conspiracy Theorist, and Yeerk Escapee. I was a little disappointed there was no option to be an Andalite or the caniform android Chee, but I wasn’t really expecting there to be one. 

Before I made any choices, I skimmed the document, seeing what I could get. Down in the items, I saw four things I absolutely wanted, but only pulled the trigger on one purchase. For 600, or 300 if I chose the Classmate background, was the Escafil Device itself, and that was an instant buy. Morphing came free for every background, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to have a fiat backed copy of the glowy blue cube. The other three were spaceships: Visser Three’s Blade Ship and an Andalite Dome Ship were both a flat 800CP, and an Andalite or Bug Fighter was 600, discounted for a Yeerk Escapee. I definitely wanted to buy all three of them, but damn they were expensive, and there was a lot of other stuff in here to buy. 

After the Items page was a section that hadn’t been in any of the other three Jump docs I’d used: Companions. I got a bit excited, thinking I’d be able to bring in Lillie, but it didn’t have an import option, it just listed the Animorphs themselves, as well as a Hork-Bajir and an Andalite, that I could buy the friendship of. I decided to just skip right past that and check out the drawbacks. I figured I could get all the points to spend before making any (more) purchases. 

The 100’s were Attractive Host, Xenophobe, and Unpopular, all of which did what they said on the tin, being Yeerk-nip, racist to aliens, or universally disliked, respectively. 

200’s were obviously a bit more problematic but still manageable. Clumsy Morpher meant my transformations would be slow and grotesque; Standing Out meant I’d a sore thumb, incapable of stealth; and Stupid Human meant that aliens would treat me like a caveman’s child. None of them really appealed any more than the 100’s did. 

The 400’s had an interesting one though. On a Mission from the Ellimist meant I’d be working for the immortal nth dimensional imp calling himself the Ellimist, which was basically his gamer tag way back when he was a mortal on his now-dead planet. I’d be his errand boy and pawn in his eternal game against the Crayak, the omnicidal giant cybernetic eyeball. Considering the Ellimist was the one who made the... the Jumper-forbidden item, and it said that he would compensate me for my weekly assistance, I had the start of an idea brewing. I took the drawback, and filled half my drawback CP quota in doing so. 

The next 400 was not quite so appealing. Unstable would make my morphs not only grotesque, but at the whims of my emotions. It meant I could trigger morphs unintentionally, and even go from one morph to another without meaning to and never in a way that could be useful. 

The last 400 was doable though. Restless Wildlife just meant that animals wouldn’t go into the acquisitive trance, which was what kept the Animorphs safe when acquiring DNA from dangerous animals. I could just hold their minds with telepathy or, if that doesn’t work, use telekinesis to hold their bodies. Worse comes to worst and I get mauled, I have a healing factor that’ll fix me up in a matter of moments. I put that one in to top off my 800CP max I could take from drawbacks, but there were still three left for me to look at. 

There were two 600’s, Visser Vendetta and The Crayak’s Attention. The first made me Visser Three’s first priority and gave him knowledge of my extra-universal abilities. No way José. The second drew the gaze of Mr Eyeball, who would try to enslave or eradicate me. Not exactly my idea of a good time. Hard pass on that one too. 

The final drawback was 800 and was called The Thirteen. It gave the ruling body of the Yeerk Empire full knowledge of me, making me target number one, and they would do everything short of planetary destruction to catch or kill me. I doubt anyone needed CP that badly. 

Regardless, I had my full CP complement, so I scanned the doc again to see which background would give me the best stuff. 

It came down to either Drop In or Yeerk Escapee. I liked both their lines of perks, but I decided to go Drop In, because a) it was free, and b) it had a discounted item I wanted even more than the Andalite Fighter. 

After my initial purchase of the Escafil Device I had 3200CP to spend, and I bought the entire Drop In perk line for a combined total of 600, leaving me 2600. 

Everyone got Morphing free. By touching any meat-based creature (including sapients) and concentrating on it, you can acquire its DNA, which is then permanently recorded for use, letting you turn into the animal at will. The official description doesn’t say meat-based, but it was impossible to copy plant or fungus DNA, and non-organic creatures (like Cera, Gladys, and Archie, or Discworld trolls for example) are completely incompatible. It’s also a perfect genetic copy of what you acquired, which means that if you acquired the DNA of a snake that had its venom sacs removed, or a dog that lost its leg, you would turn into the same snake with its venom sacs intact, or the same dog with all four legs. It also meant that if you acquired the DNA of someone with cool cybernetic upgrades, you would turn into that person sans the cyborgification. It does keep things like hair length and skin tan though, which is a little odd considering they're not genetically assured, but I'm not going to question the clarketech device that will let me become aliens and dragons for free.

You also have to overcome the morph’s natural mind. Overcoming a dog’s or a squirrel’s is relatively easy in the books, but higher organisms, like whales, can be difficult, as can animals with hive minds or strong instincts. Asserting your self is important, otherwise you can become lost in the morph. 

Apart from that little worry, there were three main limitations to morph technology. The first was a seemingly erroneous time limit, added in for plot reasons I’d guess, of two hours. If you went over that, you’d be stuck as whatever shape you were forever. You might not be as lucky as Tobias was either; not everyone can live as a hawk, or cut a deal with the Ellimist for the return of your morphing power. 

The second limitation was the clothes situation. Andalites don’t wear clothes, so they didn’t think to add a morphic field to their technology. What that means for us poor apes is that we either have to be naked or be wearing something skintight if we don’t want to lose or ruin our clothes. 

The final limitation was you couldn’t go straight from one morph to another, you had to morph back into your base form first. Fun little thing for Jumpers, though, is that alt-forms are most emphatically not morphs. That means that although I can’t morph into an eagle using my Animorphs form and morph out into my InFamous form, I can use my morphing powers in any of my forms, so I can use my Swampert form and morph into a crocodile if I want to. 

 

The DI freebie was Two of Your Earth Hours, one of Ax’s most frequent comments. It’s a common alien trope to have different systems of measurement, including time, but it tends to grate on the nerves when it keeps getting brought up repeatedly, and Marco kept telling Ax just that. The perk itself meant i would always be able to tell what time it was, regardless of where or when I was. I could also act as a stopwatch, accurate down to the picosecond. 

For a discounted 100 was Yoink!, which is possibly my favourite perk of the whole document. Normally you can’t acquire a morph from someone who is in morph, except if you bought this handy dandy little thing. It lets me copy someone else’s morph straight from them, and I can selectively allow people to acquire my morphs from me. It even says in the doc that you might want to hang around Visser Three to pick up some of his exotic extraterrestrial morphs. It’s like they could read my mind. 

Discounted to 200 was Acquisitive Gaze. Remember how I said I’d have to touch an animal to get its DNA? Not anymore! Now I just have to get within about 15 metres and concentrate for about ten seconds and then the morph is mine. 

The discounted capstone of the DI line was amazing. Chimera Morph. The Andalites have a technique that allows them to combine similar DNA to create a new form, the Frolis Manoeuvre, which is how Ax got his human morph; he combined the DNA of Jake, Cassie, Marco, and Rachel. This technique only works on the DNA from the same species, and you have to acquire all the DNA in a short period time, like five minutes max. Chimera Morph takes that technique and cranks it up to eleven. At any point I like, I can combine the DNA of any of my morphs to create combo-creatures. It does mean I have to reacquire the DNA if I want to turn into the base creatures individually, but it’s well worth it. Flying monkeys and crocopanthers are the least of what I can and will be making. I can even stick morph bits onto my alt-forms if I don’t mind giving them up for the chimera. 

The next part, kinda expensive, but good. I skipped over the Classmate and Conspiracy Theorist lines for now, and got myself the entire Yeerk Escapee line. 

My Name Is Jake cost 100, and was named after both the first line of the first book, and the time Jake fell in a Yeerk pool and had one of the slimy space slugs slither in his ear. Coincidentally, in a one in a million chance, it was the one that used to infect his brother Tom, but got promoted out of the teen body. The perk gave me a massive willpower boost, generally directed towards stopping mind control, and was specifically stated to be particularly effective against parasites. 

For 200 was What’s This Do?, which meant I’d be able to figure out how to use any alien tech I came across. I won’t automatically be able to be good at using it, but with a bit poking and prodding I can figure it out and get good with practice. It also said it wouldn’t give me the skills to understand it, but I reckon that with Mechanic and Technician from the Pokémon Jump, it shouldn’t be too much trouble to tinker and play around with for me to figure it out. 

Next was the 400CP Turning the Tables, which was a lovely complement to My Name is Jake. If I was able to resist anything trying to control my mind, I would instead take control of it. It requires a boatload of willpower to pull off, but MNiJ gave me that in spades. 

Finally, the YE capstone. 600 for Ultimate Hunter. It gave me a Vanarx morph, also known as Yeerk-bane. It was, as the perk name suggested, the ultimate hunter of Yeerks, able to suck them right out of their host’s head. But wait, there’s more! At the start of every new Jump, I get to pick one non-human creature that is mortal, follows conventional physics, and is a complex organism, I then get a morph that is designed to be its perfect predator. Oh yes, I can have quite a bit of fun with that. 

After getting the Escafil Device and taking all the perks of DI and YE, I still had 1300CP left. I hemmed and hawed for a bit, then decided to grab Estreen from the Classmate line for 200. It would do the opposite of Clumsy Morpher drawback, making my morphing fast and beautiful. It also had the extra benefit of keeping me from being overwhelmed by my morph’s instincts, unless they’re particularly powerful, like a hive mind or one of my chimeras. 

With 1100CP remaining, I went down to grab some toys from the Items list. 

Drop Ins got The Series as a freebie, which meant all the Animorphs books, including the main stories, side stories, the chronicleses, and, a little ironically, the self insert CYOA books. Perfect for freaking out the locals. 

The good stuff was a bit further down though, and far more expensive than free. 

For 400CP I got a case of DNA Samples. Now normally these would do jack shit, and for anyone but me that was still the case. I even got to pick which ten non-extinct Earth animals were in the case. It was hard to pick just ten, but I finally managed to cut enough from the list to settle on tardigrade, cuttlefish, cone snail, warrior wasp, giant desert centipede, box jellyfish, blue ringed octopus, tarantula hawk, coelacanth, and okapi. Most of them are incredibly hard to find and/or highly dangerous, but I picked the okapi because it is adorable and I love them. My favourite choice of DNA though, definitely the tardigrade. I wasn’t sure if I could get them since they’re a microorganism, but it went through without a hitch. Tardigrades are the most resilient life forms on Earth, able to survive extreme temperatures and pressures, and even live in space. They’d be a huge asset to any chimera morph I added them to, and they’re also really cute. 

For a discounted 300 was something just as fun - Fossils! Any five extinct Earth animals, and we all know what that really means. Dinosaurs! I whittled the list down to megalodon, thylacine, ankylosaurus, spinosaurus, and archaeopteryx. I know that two of those aren’t dinos, and frankly the archaeopteryx is something of a grey area, but I couldn’t pass up the mega shark and Tassie Tiger. 

For those who don’t know why the archaeopteryx isn’t definitively a dinosaur, it’s because no one is really sure when the exact point dinosaurs stopped being dinosaurs and started being birds. The archaeopteryx is a bit further down the evolutionary line than what most people think of when it comes to dinosaurs, but they’re usually grouped with the beasts of earlier eras. Still, dino bird!

By taking the megalodon as a fossil proved that they are, in fact, extinct. In this world anyway. What with the ocean being the ocean, no one has ever been 100% sure that they weren’t just lurking deep deep deep underwater. 

And as for the two actual dinosaurs, I went with my heart for the ankylosaurus since it’s my favourite dinosaur, and with my unbridled aggression for the spinosaurus, one of the largest and most dangerous dinosaurs we know of. Most people think of the T Rex, but that guy’s got nothing on the spiny saur. 

 

With all the must haves taken care of, I still had 400CP left. Now, I could buy a new companion, but I didn’t want to drag along a single Animorph without their friends, and creating a Hork-Bajir or an Andalite ex nihilo seemed a bit... I dunno. I wasn’t exactly sure I’d like that. 

I could get something from the Conspiracy Theorist line, or something else from Classmate, but there were also some more toys that I’d like. Hmmm... I’ll take some more items. 

First, for 200 is the Skeleton Key. A handy little gizmo about the size of a credit card that bypasses electronic security measures. It works for keycards, retina scans, fingerprint readers, even DNA coding. It also works for lower tech stuff like metal detectors. 

For a discounted 50 was a Morph Pocket, a nifty little pouch about the size of a purse of my design that would morph with me, unlike any other bulky objects I tried to bring along. I decided to go with the ever fashionable fannypack for my Pocket. 

For 100 I could choose between a Shredder or Dracon Beam. Both were high intensity laser pistols, but the difference between them was that the Dracon was a Yeerk knockoff that would feel like a whole body electrocution even on its lowest settings, whereas the Shredder was an Andalite original, and was virtually painless, even if it burned a hole right through your midsection. I decided to go with the Shredder, if only so if I was ever in a TMNT Jump I could shoot the Shredder with my Shredder. Plus, I’m not big on unnecessary pain. I imported my InFamous handgun for that.

With my last 50CP, I could get a single packet of Instant Maple and Ginger Oatmeal (if a Yeerk’s host eats this it frees the Yeerk from its need of Kandrona rays and also makes it half mad with oatmeal addiction), a Morphing Outfit (something I could get just about anywhere since it was just skintight clothing, nothing special about it), or a Notebook (automatically updates with conspiracy notes I find while I have it with me). All of them seem soooo good, but what do you expect for 50? I tossed the Notebook into the cart and finalised it all by hitting INSERTION. 

 

Just before I got tossed into the world, Chan reached over my shoulder and tapped the JumpPad, causing a window to open telling me that I had the Crayak’s Attention. Great, just great. 

 

 


	2. My Name Is Jade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just trying to find her feet for now, Jumper meets the two entities that'll be tugging at her like toddlers fighting over a toy

My name is Jade. If you know anything about the Animorphs series, you’ll know that I won’t give you my last name or the name of the town I’m living in for a decade. If you don’t know why, the reason is the Yeerks, a parasitic species of mind controlling slugs from space. They’ve infested a number of worlds, including the Earth but they haven’t conquered it yet. The hosts of the Yeerks are called Controllers because they’re being controlled. A bit on the nose, but you can’t argue with the accuracy of it. If the Yeerks find out where I am, they’ll focus their full attention here, although since Visser Three makes regular visits here and it’s the main focus of attacks by the “Andalite bandits”, it’s a surprise that isn’t the case already. I mean, this place seems to be their primary base, but it’s still not the focus of the invasion. I guess V3 doesn’t know how to manage his offence and his defence. The Animorphs themselves don’t say their names or town because they’re protecting their families, but I don’t have that problem since I quite literally fell out of the sky. 

I came to this world with no actual plan, just a few ideas on how to screw things up for the better. Of course I realised that my attempts to screw things up would likely butterfly away a lot of the markers I’d use as plot milestones, but I was relying on the expectation that the Ellimist and the Crayak would be moving their pieces to ensure that they’d happen regardless. My presence would shift the game a bit but wouldn’t break the board. Probably not anyway, I’m not all that powerful in the grand scheme of things. 

In all, I had four concrete goals. The first was to make sure that the Animorphs all survived the war and didn’t develop crippling PTSD or overwhelming bloodthirst and battle lust. Bit of a tall order, but I’d do my best. 

Second was to steal the ships I couldn’t buy with CP. That meant nicking V3’s Blade Ship before it got hijacked by fleeing Yeerks, grabbing Elfangor’s fighter before it got disintegrated, finding out where the bug fighters were kept and taking as many as I could, and somehow wrest control of a damn Dome Ship from the Andalites. And while I’m in the market for spaceships, I might as well grab a Yeerk Pool Ship, just for the heck of it. The Dome and the Pool were definitely going to be the most problematic of the bunch. Just grabbing them was going to be hard, but I didn’t know where I could put them since they wouldn’t fit in my Warehouse. Maybe I could find those teeny jerk aliens and use their shrink ray? Or did that only work on organics since it used a modified Escafil Device? I dunno, I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. 

Third, I was going to barter with the Ellimist for a single round trip to the Yeerk homeworld a few thousand years ago to pick up a small pool of proto-Yeerks. I had an idea for them that would require bioengineering, controlled evolution, and probably a lot of trial and error. I was going to try and grow them into a species that would reverse brainwashing. Maybe I could even breed them into a species that formed a symbiotic relationship to protect the brain from outside influences. Probably a long shot, but I had all the times in the worlds, as long as Chan kept me around anyway. 

Finally, I wanted to spit in Crayak’s eye. Literally spit in his eye, and since I can use Hydro Cannon and he’s practically all eye, the result should be fun. 

I technically managed the first, mostly did the second, achieved the third, and barely got away with the fourth. All in all, quite a fun Jump, even with being pulled out of time and space every week or so to do stuff for Ellie. 

 

* * *

  

My first thought upon insertion was a word that is able to be said only once in a PG publication. This was because Chan inserted me a hundred metres above the open water and half a kilometre out from the shore. 

“Not happy, Chan!” I shouted to thin air as I used telekinesis to catch myself before I built up too much momentum, just slowing myself and angling my descent enough to hit the water smoothly. 

I swapped to my Swampert form and had a nice leisurely swim to shore while I got my bearings. It only took about twenty minutes for me to figure out that I had probably twelve to sixteen hours before Elfangor’s crash at the abandoned construction site. That meant I had to work fast. When I hit the beach, I opened a portal to the Warehouse and dried myself as best I could before heading over to my workshop area. 

 

Six hours later and I had a working prototype thanks to Mechanic and Technician. Four hours later and I had another three ready to go. They weren’t perfect, but they didn’t need to be, just good enough. 

I still had a few hours before things kicked off, and I wanted to get my DNA sample and fossil morphs before heading out to try and find the site, but I couldn’t find them anywhere in my Warehome or in the sorting files computer. 

I went over to Chan’s freestanding door and knocked, not quite frantically but close to it. 

The door creaked open a crack, just enough to see Chan’s eye and the corner of her mouth. 

“What is it?” She hissed. “I can’t interfere with a Jump, or it defeats the whole purpose.”

“I can’t find the stuff I bought. I figured you could tell me, that’s all” I said, a little taken aback. 

“It’s all in your safe house. Just go there.”

“Wait, I have a safe house here? I thought it was only for InFamous”

“No, it’s one of the things that you get every new Jump.” She sighed. “You also get a hundred thousand pokébucks, half a dozen master balls, ammo for your guns, and a bug out bag in every CP-backed property that you own. You’d know all this already if you’d bothered to check beforehand. Look, just open a portal to your safe house and everything will be there.”

With that, she shut the door in my face, leaving me gaping like a fish at the lump of information she fed me. 

“What am I supposed to do with all the master balls? They only work on Pokémon” I said dumbly. I didn’t know what else I could say. And it was true, I’d tried to catch a couple of Antarctic animals with the balls I’d had left over from the Pokémon Jump and they just bounced off them. I tried to modify the balls, just to see if I could catch regular animals, but the technology wasn’t compatible with non-Pokémon. I kind of gave up during Mystery Dungeon, what with being a Pokémon myself and all. 

 

With no better ideas, I did what she told me and tried to open a portal to my safe house. 

I should know by now, always listen to Chan. Sure she’ll give me psycho exes and toss me into a world at deadly heights and tell omnicidal eyeballs about my existence, but she is always right when she tells me something. I almost said she was always honest, but that would be like saying the fey are honest. They might always tell the truth, but that’s not the same as being honest. 

Regardless of the truth/honesty disparity, I had opened a portal to the safe house, almost identical to the InFamous one, and all my purchases were there on the table. What I was looking for was the two plain looking cases sitting side by side, next to my own personal blue cube. 

Laying down the larger of the two cases and flicking it open, there were ten cylinders, about the size of V cans, resting in moulded packing foam, each labelled with the animals I’d picked. I slowly ran my hands over them, acquiring each in turn. 

First was the tardigrade, the super tough, super cute microorganism also known as a moss piglet or a water bear. The supreme being when it came to survival, even better than cockroaches at staying alive. 

Next was the cuttlefish, specifically the Pharaoh Cuttlefish, a master of camouflage and disguise. It can not only change its colours better than a chameleon, it can even change the texture of its hide. It can also shoot out sepia ink, which humans used to collect so they could make things look old when they travelled to the past in tv shows and movies. On an unrelated note, but one that tends to stick in the brain, the mating habit of cuttlefish is like a violent tentacle blowjob. Yeah, try forgetting that fact. I couldn’t, even before I got my flawless memory. 

Next, the cone snail. Cone snails are incredibly venomous molluscs named after their conical shells. Humans are great at naming stuff aren’t we? The really fun thing about cone snails is that they’re not supposed to be handled by anyone because they can and will sting the person that tries it, and the person will suffer a great deal of pain, and possibly die. The little ones are no worse than a bee sting, but I chose one of the big guys, with potent, potentially deadly venom, conus geographus, the geographic cone or cigarette snail, so named because the victim of their sting supposedly lives long enough to have one last cigarette. A bit of an exaggeration, but like I said, humans are great at naming stuff. They have a whole barrage of toxic stingers they can fire out in any direction, and there is no antitoxin for a cone snail’s sting. Ironically, it also has great potential as a painkiller when properly refined. 

The warrior wasp, or drumming wasp, has one of the most painful stings in the world, described as torture akin to being chained in an active volcano. This from the man who considers a bee sting a love bite. These guys build nests that look like an armadillo, and even though they’re a social insect, I was willing to give morphing it a go on the basis that, like bees, wasps are more like individuals connected to a greater whole, rather than, like ants, mere cells that make up the creature that is an ants’ nest, or like termites, which are basically husks controlled by the queen, which acts as the central node of the hive mind. 

On the same scale, the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, is the scolopendra heros, better known as the giant desert centipede, the largest centipede in North America and has the most painful sting Coyote Peterson ever experienced, worse than the bullet ant or the Japanese giant hornet. Now this little bastard was all mine to morph into. 

The next potently venomous morph I picked was the box jellyfish. Australia’s favourite marine invertebrate, beating out the blue bottle by a tendril, box jellyfish are the fastest moving jellies, able to move at six metres per minute, and have around fifteen tentacles on each corner, and each tentacle has about half a million tiny venomous needles. This venom, as every Aussie knows, is capable of killing an adult human within minutes. 

Another deadly Aussie animal, the blue-ringed octopus carries enough venom to kill twenty full grown adults, with no anti-venom available. They’re normally docile, but if they’re startled or threatened they make their rings glow as a warning before biting; and, like all octopi, they can squeeze through gaps that are seemingly impossible to fit in. 

The tarantula hawk is neither tarantula nor hawk, but in fact a tarantula-hunting spider wasp. Every part of that name seems pretty horrific to people, and I just had to have one. They had the same ranking on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index as a bullet ant, described as blinding and shockingly electric. Sounds like fun to try out, huh? Despite hunting tarantulas, they didn’t actually eat them, just laid eggs in the spiders. They actually ate fermented fruits, basically booze, and they can get so drunk they can’t even fly properly. Seriously, these bugs just get better and better. 

Coelacanths were thought to be extinct for a long time, they’re basically living fossils. When they were discovered to be extant, people were shocked. They’re one of the rarest animals in the world, which is why I bought the DNA sample of one rather than something deadlier. 

Finally, there was the okapi, the cute little beasts that were thought to be mythical for the longest time. They look like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe, and are freaking adorable little buggers. 

 

The only indication that I had acquired the DNA of all of them was a slight feeling in my fingertips and in my chest, like a heavy bass thrum, but so slight it could almost have been imagined. If it hadn’t been for my bodymod senses and PMD Hyperkinesis, I doubt I’d have felt it at all. 

I snapped the DNA case shut and opened the fossils case. In the smaller case, held in the same moulded foam, were my five fossils. Five stones that had been carefully chipped and brushed away from the remains of my extinct animals. 

The megalodon fossil was the tip of a tooth, and even just the tip was as big as my fist. The megalodon was the largest shark and one of the most powerful predators ever to have lived. Nearly twenty metres long and weighing over 54 thousand kilos, it had a bite more powerful than a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the supposed tyrant king of the dinosaurs. The closest living relative of the megalodon is that most cinematic of sharks, Australia’s very own great white. Basically if you want to know what a megalodon looked like, imagine Jaws but about three or four times bigger. 

The thylacine fossil was part of a skull, looking fairly similar to a dog’s, albeit more triangular. The Tasmanian Tiger went extinct mostly because of white men hunting them for their pelts, although competing for food with newly introduced dogs certainly didn’t help. The last known Tassie Tiger died barely eighty years before I left home, and only about sixty years ago at this point in the Animorphs world, in 1936. Some people claimed to have seen them since then, but it’s never been proven so they’ve become something of an Aussie cryptid. 

The ankylosaurus fossil was part of its clubbed tail. Ankylosauruses were relatively small dinos, only about 7 or 8 metres long and 1.7 metres tall. That’s about as tall as I am in my bodymod, although none of my forms is close to that length, or its nearly seven thousand kilo weight. It was an herbivore, was covered in heavy armour plating across its back, and of course had its instantly recognisable clubbed tail, which was probably used to defend against predators and prove who had the biggest balls among themselves. 

The spinosaurus fossil was another tooth fragment. Spinies lived in what’s now northern Africa, and even though they and anklies both lived in the Cretaceous period, they’re unlikely to have met since there was about 30 to 60 million years between the two of them, with spinies being the older buggers. They were up to 18 metres long and almost four and a half metres tall, weighing in at about 20 thousand kilos. The T Rex was thought to be the biggest thunder lizard around, but then they found the giganotosaurus and the carchadontosaurus, the T Rex’s big siblings, but the spinosaurus is bigger even than them. Let me put it this way; if you know Game of Thrones, the T Rex is King Baratheon, a big impressive bastard. But then you see the Hound, the giganotosaurus equivalent in this metaphor, and you go “Whoah! Can’t get any bigger than that guy!” Oh yes it can! The Mountain, biggest meanest bastard you’d never hope to meet, that’s the spinosaurus, and he can lift Robert Baratheon up by the throat. These bastards are carnivores that would prey on anything they could find, probably even each other if they were hungry enough. 

Last, but certainly not least, was the bit of the archaeopteryx wing. The original feathery dinosaur and toothy bird. If you look out your window you’ll likely see some direct descendants of the archaeopteryx in the trees or on your neighbour’s roof. These guys weren’t all that big, about the size of a raven. And although they had a half-metre wingspan that let them fly (probably, I’ll find out first hand if they could), they spent most of their time on the ground, acting like raptors. 

 

Now that I had acquired all my samples, I thought it was high time to check where my safe house was placed so I could spend the last couple of hours searching for the construction site. 

...Huh... How about that. Found it. 

Turns out my "safe" house is actually the former onsite office for the construction site where Elfangor is due to crash in the next two to six hours. 

“Gee, thanks Chan. Now I can have my house be crushed by a damn spaceship” I muttered, going outside to check the placement of the building. 

“Actually, the placement was my doing” said a soft, kindly voice from behind me. “I was told that you would want to be here for the start, so I nudged a little bit to allow your property’s manifestation in this place”

I turned around, and there was an elderly man, with a Merlin beard, pointy ears, and a soft blue glow. 

“Thanks Toomin,” I said, addressing the Ellimist by the name he had picked for himself as a mortal, long long ago. “And I’m guessing that the Sauron wannabe nudged back to put it directly in the path of the crashing fighter”

“My master wouldn’t do that. Not when you’re still a potential ally” came another voice, this one not so kindly. High and shrill, this voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. 

Turning to look at the source of the voice, I saw the strange pruny dinosaur thing that was the Drode, Crayak’s majordomo. He looks like a shrink wrapped Barney the dinosaur that had had a head transplant with someone who thought human heads were supposed to be triangles and tried to correct the ovoid it had been originally, and the only non bruise-purple parts of him are the virulent greens around his glinting eyes and needle-tooth filled mouth. 

“Of course not, Wildcard.” I said, calling him by the translation of his chosen name. It’s kinda fun to have enough out of universe knowledge to be able to thumb your nose at the Powers That Be of the universe you’re in. “Of course not. Because the giant eyeball on a stick is magnanimous to a fault”

I don’t think Drode liked my sarcasm because his facial wrinkles deepened in displeasure. 

“There is still enough time to arrange that however, and it is not against the Rules” he warned, his shrill voice dropping a few octaves. 

“And that would be his Move? Interesting... And how would you respond to that Ellie?” I asked, turning to the glowing apparition. 

“It would not be my place to interfere. As the Drode says, it would not be against the Rules.” The Ellimist half shrugged and spread his hands. 

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and shook my head to clear it. This clearly wasn’t a productive direction. I hadn’t really even meant the question seriously, I was just needling the two a little. 

“You know what, never mind,” I said, using the same tone that I had when fed up with my brothers after trying to explain my mental health problems. It’s no use trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t want to try to understand.

“Mr the Drode, I decline the Crayak’s not quite so kind offer of tacit enslavement, I’ve already offered my services to the Ellimist as a part-time assistant, so you can go tell him that. I apologise in advance for the displeasure you’ll likely suffer, but it was your choice to work for him in the first place” I told the Drode, brusquely but politely before turning to the Ellimist. “And as for you Mr the Ellimist, I appreciate the nudge to a more convenient location. Is there any work you need from me in the next few hours?”

They both seemed to be taken aback a bit at my sudden change in attitude, Drode more so than Ellie. He gave a hissy growl, a mocking bow, his weak, many-jointed hands twirling in the air in front of him, then disappeared with a *pop!* that was only audible psychically. 

The Ellimist gave me a smile that was just this side of condescending and told me that, while he had no work for me presently, he wished to introduce himself to his new assistant. Then he too disappeared, although his exit was accompanied by more of a psychic hum. 

 

With my two extra-dimensional guests out of the way, I still had a few hours to kill before the crash. 

I went back inside the house and opened a portal to the Warehome where I found Lillie chatting with Nebby and Sally. She’d been ecstatic to be able to talk with her Pokémon post-PMD Jump, and they seemed just as happy to talk with her. 

“Sorry to interrupt girls, but I was hoping you’d be able to help me out a bit” I said, knocking on the doorframe. I explained what I needed, and they were happy to help. 

Sally and Nebby got Toddles, Mort, Cera, and Archie to help pore over the series to make sure there wasn’t anything I’d missed. Only Nebby and Archie could actually read human languages, but I had audiobook and digital copies with text-to-speech for the others. 

Meanwhile, I had Chazza, Gladys, Borealis, and Cuddles meet Lillie and I in the large clear area outside the Warehome. I held out the blue cube to Lillie, letting her put her hand on top and gain the power to morph. I had offered to let some of the ‘mon give it a go at the same time, but they had declined. I think it was the idea of learning what was essentially Ditto’s move that put them off. It was a standing offer though, so they could change their minds whenever they wished. 

Since they weren’t morphing themselves, I had the troupe watching out for us to make sure we didn’t lose ourselves in the morph. 

Lillie and I both acquired Evil because he was  ~~the best kitty ever~~  the best animal to use for a first morph since the series gave us a pretty solid idea of what to expect, as well as being very familiar with him myself. 

Lillie had to touch him to acquire his DNA, but I tested my remote acquisition. It took longer than when I was touching the samples, but I felt that same barely-there thrum that seemed to accompany DNA acquisitions for me. Because of my drawback, Evil didn’t still for me, but that didn’t matter since he was happy to sit under one of the sunlamps I’d bought in InFamous while Lillie stroked his soft black fur. When she acquired his DNA he did go into a trance, but you could only really tell since he stopped his soft purring for a few seconds. 

 

I went first, concentrating on becoming my beautiful puddy tat. The first changes weren’t visible, but I could feel my guts resizing and rearranging themselves. A second later and the hair all over my body began to grow and change colour. As Jade, I had dirty blonde hair in a sort of swept bob cut (very 90’s Drew Barrymore) and that got sucked back into my head most of the way as it turned black. 

My face was next, growing fur and whiskers as my mouth and nose ran together to become a cat’s muzzle. My vision changed as well, my hyper-acute sense of sight dulled to about 15/20 vision and the colours growing muted, yet somehow crisper in Evil’s low-spectrum sight. 

At this point, the real Evil was freaking out a bit. Seeing and smelling me change from my latest version of me (he can always tell it’s me, regardless of which alt-form I’m wearing, which I think is incredibly sweet and something for which I thanked Chan profusely when I found out) into a copy of himself was incredibly unsettling for him. He looked scared, confused, and rather offended, like when I’d put on deodorant and he hadn’t noticed until I started to spray it. He ran behind Gladys and peeked out from between her legs. 

My knees reversed direction and I fell forwards as my hands twisted into little paws, shrinking all the while. The whole thing took less than a minute from start to finish. 

When the cat brain kicked in, it was a little freaked out, wanting to run! Get up high! 

I managed to get control after leaping on top of Gladys’s head. 

<Sorry about that> I said to her, using the pseudo-telepathy called thought-speak that was granted when in morph. I rubbed my cheek against Gladys’s head by way of apology and hopped down. 

Evil, the real Evil, peeked out at me. He came close to me, his little nose twitching as he sniffed me and only smelled himself. He decided that I was alright and started washing my face. He is just the sweetest little thing ever. 

<It’s all good guys> I said, letting everyone hear me. <You wanna give it a go now Lillie?> 

“Alright. I’m gonna do it!” She said, looking very determined as she concentrated. 

Morphing is never the same for everyone, you have to be an estreen and practise constantly to be able to morph consistently. For me it hadn’t looked too bad for the most part, mostly because the fur came in first to cover up the worst of it. Lillie got the fur last though. 

The first thing to change was her hands, her finger shortening and twisting to become bald cat paws, except her fingernails had stayed the same. It did not look right at all. 

Next was the tail, pushing out from the base of her spine, the skin stretching out with the bones, the muscles growing in after a moment’s lag, leaving it limp, bony, and weird looking. 

I’d made sure to turn Evil away at this point so he didn’t freak out again, and kept him distracted by washing his face as well. 

I couldn’t see it, but I heard her fall forward with a gasp as her legs changed shape. I think they’d started to shrink before the rest of her had, so that couldn’t have been too pleasant. 

Her transformation had taken a little longer than mine, but I heard the last few little grinding and squishing noises that always accompanied the skeletal and organ changes finish and turned to look at her. 

She was Evil. And Evil was very confused now. There were three of him and he wasn’t sure he liked that. I could feel the same thoughts and feelings in my Evil-morph’s mind. Lillie gave a confused chirp and started circling us, checking out the copies of herself while she tried to gain control of the morph. 

<Ok, I think I’ve got it> she said, sitting down. <This is great! I thought it would be like being Pixie again and I wouldn’t remember who I was, but I’m still me!>

I laughed and explained that she wouldn’t lose her memories in morph, but she’d still have to be careful with some morphs, like whales, social insects, and any chimeras she got from me. 

We morphed back into human and checked the abandoned construction site to make sure things hadn’t kicked off yet. 

“Alright, I think I’ll try some of my samples. I’m doing wasps first, so watch me to make sure I don’t lose myself in some imaginary hive” I instructed the others. 

I’d made sure Evil had gone inside this time, I didn’t want him traumatised by this change. Good thing I had too, because I think seeing my face split open into the warrior wasp’s mandibular maw would have made him never want to come near me again. 

I felt my skin hardening into an exoskeleton as my endoskeleton turned to mush and disappeared. 

SPROOT! SPROOT!

Two extra legs sprouted from my chest while my other limbs changed shape into the hooked claws at the end of the legs and my arse grew out to become a full on abdomen, complete with stinger. 

Shrinking down, the rest of my face changed at last, antennae sprouting from my forehead and my eyes bulging out to give me a collection of tiny images in all directions making up a strange wobbly bulging picture from my new compound eyes. And as for the colours? Well those went nuts! It’s like mucking about with the colour and contrast settings on your computer monitor. 

While I was wondering at the new vision, I felt the wasp mind bubble up. I wasn’t worried for nothing, as I could feel the emptiness where the hive connection should be, and the wasp, while not intelligent enough to worry, did feel a bit uneasy at the lack of hive, but it was more like going to school and finding out none of your friends were there than a loss of mind or self. The rest of the wasp mind was fairly familiar though, part of it wanted to feed, part of it wanted to make a new nest, and under it all was a low simmering anger. Nothing serious, just a general low grade grouchiness that would lead to stinging anything that inconvenienced it badly enough, even if that was a pretty low bar. 

I tried flying around a bit, and whew! What a rush! I could fly psychically and with my bodymod wings, but it was nothing like this!

Buzz! I’m a couple metres to the left. 

Buzz! Half a metre higher. 

Buzz! I’m right by Lillie’s ear. 

This thing could really move! It was perfect for what I wanted. 

<It’s all good guys. It’s even easier to control this than it was the cat> I told them, landing on Lillie’s shoulder and walking across to her front. <You can acquire it from me Lillie, just be aware that this thing is buzzing with rage and energy>

There was a collective groan at my pun, at which I mentally punched the air in victory, then I felt a quietness come over me for a few seconds from Lillie acquiring the warrior wasp DNA from me. 

I buzzed over to sit on Chazza’s snout while Lillie morphed into the wasp. 

As soon as she was done, I felt a slight tug in the empty portion of my wasp mind. 

The hive! We were a part of the same hive! We must work together to build the nest! We must find a queen so she may lay eggs! We must gather food for the queen and the nest!

I shook myself mentally, trying to free myself from the sudden onslaught of the wasp mind. 

<Lil? You okay over there?> I asked her, worried that the addition of the budding hive mind between our morphs to her wasp mind might have overwhelmed her. I needn’t have worried, Lillie is a lot tougher than people give her credit for. 

<Yeah... Yeah! I’m good!> She replied, a little hesitant at first, but more confident as she asserted her will. 

She buzzed around a bit, enjoying the sensation, then joined me on Chazza’s snout. 

Our antennae rubbed against each other, the equivalent of shaking hands and smelling each other’s bums. 

“Uhhh, dad? Lillie? I don’t wanna complain, but why am I wasp central?” Chazza asked, looking at us cross-eyed down his nose. 

We laughed and buzzed off to demorph. 

 

Since I still had plenty of time (I’d checked and the sun still hadn’t gone down even after an hour of faffing about in morph), I checked in with the story squad, who confirmed that the first few books were important for a solid foundation against the Yeerks but I could still harry them somewhat provided it was away from the Animorphs themselves, before going to improve my gadgets, including a remote as well. 

 

Two and a half hours later and it was showtime. I’d still been fiddling a bit when I heard Elfangor’s unplanned emergency descent and landing. I quickly put it back together, making sure all the innards were in place and nothing would go sproing at an inconvenient moment. 

As Evil, I walked over and around the blind side of the Andalite fighter for the teens. I demorphed and placed two of my devices on this side, one at either end of the ship, about a metre away from it. A bit further would’ve been better, but I didn’t want to risk them being seen. Once I’d heard Jake exit the craft, I turned them on. Around the real ship flickered into sight was a holographic representation of it, the two rough projectors overlapping their images to create a more solid image. 

I opened a small portal in front of me and poked my head through. 

“Ready?” I stage whispered to the strongest four Pokémon with hands (Cera, Gladys, Toddles, and Cuddles). 

At an affirmative from all of them, I opened the portal as big as it could get and still be hidden be the holograms. The fighter fell through and I closed the portal right after it. The four ‘mon grunted with effort as they caught it. I hadn’t thought they’d be able to catch it full on, but they did it. For like half a second, they did it. Then it crashed to the floor of the Warehouse. 

* * *

_“Here’s the box,” Jake told the Andalite_

_A pause as Elfangor thought-spoke privately to them._

_“I, um... was that your family? That picture?”_

* * *

I reopened the portal so Nebby and I could use our combined psychic might to lift up one of my helicopters, with Lillie and Sally inside it. I hadn’t realised it, but my psychic strength had grown exponentially since I’d last really tested it, and I could probably lifted the chopper by myself. I’d grown a bit lax at testing myself in that last year and a bit in PMD. I’d really have to push myself here to make up for it. 

I’d stripped this chopper for parts long ago to rebuild one of the others, now it was just a husk. A husk that I could use. See, there had to be something for the second bug fighter to destroy or else there’d be a crater and questions I didn’t want asked. As for the first bug fighter, well that was what the girls were for. 

While I was waiting for the Visser and his flunkies to show up, I stood at the edge of the hologram, just barely within range, and acquired Elfangor’s DNA as he finished explaining the morphing technology to the five teenagers. 

* * *

  _“I’ll do it,” Cassie said, visibly surprising Jake. She isn’t usually so quick to decide things, but, like Tobias, she felt the truth of Elfangor’s words._

_“I think we should all decide together," Jake suggested. "One way or the other."_

_"What's that?" Rachel asked. She was looking up toward the stars. Far, far overhead, two pinpoints of bright red light were shooting across the sky._

* * *

«Here we go» I thought to the others, using my regular telepathy. It felt a lot smoother in my head than the thought-speak I had to use in morph. Actually, did I have to use it? My psychic powers were mental, not biological, so maybe— maybe I should focus on the matter at hand and worry about maybes later. 

I extended my telepathy to Elfangor, knowing that he’d be using a mental command to have his ship fire its shredder. I also put down the other two projectors near the first.

When Visser Three came swaggering down to gloat over his fallen foe, I quietly acquired his Andalite host’s DNA as well and added it to Elfangor’s, making my first chimera, even if it was only the Frolis Manoeuvre. I’d add Ax’s too when I got the chance. 

I’d just finished getting the Visser’s DNA when I felt Elfangor command his ship to fire on the bug fighter

«Now!» I ordered the girls. Together, they shot the ship down. Lillie, in her Pixie the Alolan Ninetales form, used Moonblast at the same time Sally the Salazzle used Dragon Pulse. Their combined attacks looked enough like a shredder beam to not raise any questions, and they utterly destroyed the ship they were aiming for. 

When the Visser ordered the other to destroy the Andalite fighter, I switched projectors. They were only crude models, only capable of showing a single image each. The first two had been programmed with the image of Elfangor’s wrecked fighter, which I had done from the memory of the tv series (I was certain we were in a universe that followed the books, but I gambled that the tv series would have the right visuals. It paid off, even though things were slightly different it wasn’t enough to cause problems for me). The second projectors had the same image, but glowing red. I opened a portal that all three of us hopped through. I slowly ramped up the intensity of the image in time with the helicopter that was actually being hit by the Dracon beams. When it disintegrated, I flicked off the projectors and shut the portal as closed as it could be while I was inside the Warehouse. I opened another a few metres away from the Visser, behind some rubble to keep me out of view. 

I couldn’t do anything to stop him eating Elfangor, but I could acquire the Antarean Bogg morph he used to do so. 

While he was gloating over his meal, I got the monstrous alien morph. It was enormous, its legs were each the size of redwood trees, it had thick tentacular arms, and a huge bloated head, its wide mouth filled with rows of wickedly sharp teeth as long as a man’s arm. 

<Ah,> V3 thought-spoke, <nothing like a good Antarean Bogg morph for... taking a bite out of your enemies.>

As much as a I hate the slug, I had to give him props for that pun. Still, I had to take points off for bad taste. 

I heard Marco throwing up, and so did the Hork-Bajir near their hiding spot. It called out, warning the others of witnesses in that strange mix of English and HB language. 

When the Visser told his minions to spread out and find them, I had an amusing impulse that I couldn’t deny. 

«Esplin 9466 sucks eggs!» I projected at all Controllers within range of my telepathy, using V3’s actual Yeerk name instead of his title, something that is universally rude. 

I projected my laugh as well when he whipped his stalk eyes around, and his head as well for his main eyes to look for the source as well. 

I haven’t described an Andalite yet, have I? Alright, take a centaur, make it a blueish tan, replace the mouth and nose with three vertical nasal slits, add on a couple of flexible giraffe-like horns that ended in eyes, and slap a scorpion tail on the butt. That’s about it. Actually the tail is more like a monkey tail with a sickle growing from the end, but the books call it a scorpion tail in every description, so take that as you will. Oh yeah, and instead of having buff arms from firing bows and swinging swords all day, they’ve actually got thin weak arms and seven fingers on each hand. I guess they weren’t alien enough without the extra fingers. 

I stuck around just long enough to make sure that the soon-to-be Animorphs managed to escape, then I got gone as well, opening and closing portals under my holographic projectors as well. I didn’t want to leave those around for people to find. 

Just like that, I managed to score a starship. It was only small, about the size of two small buses side by side, and it was pretty badly damaged, but it was mine. 

 

The next few days were spent practising morphs with Lillie and Cuddles, the only Pokémon to have changed his mind. Of course, Cuddles being Cuddles, he only wanted to turn into big cute things or small creepy crawly things. I offered to make a spidephant for him, but he declined. I just shrugged and made one for me after visiting the Gardens, the combined zoo/amusement park. African elephant + tarantula = spidephant. Strange mix of instincts, but pretty fun to play around as. Shame they didn’t have any funnelwebs there or I’d’ve added that into the mix, along with some more elephant to even it out. 

The vanarx was the most interesting morph to play with. It’s basically a long, translucent, dark purple tube mounted on a velociraptor’s legs. It has a large circular mouth filled with sharp little teeth. What it does is wrap its mouth around its victim’s head and sucks the Yeerk right out, leaving the former Controller almost entirely unharmed, apart from the thick mucusy saliva and some grazes from the teeth. 

It has incredibly poor vision, seeing barely twenty metres in front of it with its seven beady black eyes, and even that was like snow on an old tv, if the snow was a washed out red. It’s sense of smell was phenomenal though, better than a wolf, with the mouth doing double duty as a nose, and it had a kind of echolocating electrosense that could distinguish between the brainwaves of Controllers and non-Controllers. When the perk was called Ultimate Hunter, it wasn’t lying. This thing could find a single Yeerk in a crowd of thousands, and follow the brain slug into its home if it tries to escape into a pool, because the vanarx is amphibious, able to hold its breath for nearly an hour, and each raptor-like foot had two long talons that could spread like fingers and had tough webbing between them to help it swim. No Yeerk was safe when the yeerkbane was near. And we had three on hand

 

It was the next day that I knew the Animorphs had their first expedition into the Yeerk pool to rescue Cassie. I couldn’t do much to interfere with things, but I could do something. 

In my Pokéworld Wyex form, I calmly walked into the yeerk pool along with a bunch of real Controllers through an entrance at a mall. This one was through a movie theatre bathroom that was supposedly out of order. 

Down, down, down, down the steep stairs towards the deep sloshing sound, screams, cries, and triumphant laughter that all echoed out of the pool and up towards us. 

One of the Controllers near me must’ve wrested control from his Yeerk for a brief moment, because a look of panic crossed his face and his foot tried to turn back before his expression turned calm again, albeit a bit annoyed, and he kept going with our small group. 

Taking pride of place in the centre of the massive cavern into which we walked was the Yeerk pool, filled not with water but with a liquid the approximate colour and consistency of molten lead. Switching my vision to see heat for a moment proved that it wasn’t though, since its temperature was only about 25°C. 

Extending over the pool were two steel piers, one for disembarking Yeerks and one for Yeerks to re-enter their host. Around the pool were cages, in which were kept the involuntary hosts. Lovely way of saying mind controlled slave isn’t it? It also infers the existence of voluntary hosts, which do exist. Believe it or not, some people willingly give up their bodies to be part of the glorious Yeerk Empire. Not to invoke Godwin’s Law, but it really seems like Jews and Romani volunteering to join the Nazis. 

 

I followed along with the real Controllers and kneeled on the first pier, making a splash similar to ones made by Yeerks leaving their hosts by using my telekinesis to slap the pool liquid. Thankfully the Hork-Bajir guards standing by me had bad eyesight or they might’ve noticed the lack of slug leaving my ear. 

Acting like a good little volunteer, I thanked the guards for helping me up and wandered over to the very comfortable area where the voluntary hosts hung out while waiting for their Yeerks to finish feeding. I took a plate of nibbles and sat down to watch a bit of telly and wait for things to kick off. 

 

* * *

 

I must’ve dozed off, because I was awoken by a sound completely out of place in this hellscape: the trumpeting of an African elephant. In the words of the creepy kid in Poltergeist, They’re Heeere! 

I tried to copy the actual volunteers and scrambled to try to get away from the crazy zoo invasion and/or find a weapon to shoot at them. Of course I already had my Shredder in my fanny pack morph pouch, but this was the perfect opportunity to grab a Dracon beam. 

It’s such a shame that my aim is so bad when I’m this shaken. I must’ve accidentally shot half a dozen Controllers by mistake, and more than a few of my shots went wide and blasted the locks off of some cages. Oh whoops! I just shot the cop Controller who brought in Cassie! Oh no. Oh dear. How awful. 

The Animorphs had just managed to clear a line of Taxxons (giant gross yellow centipedes with four blobby red eyes around an ever-hungry lamprey-like mouth) and were on their way out with a swarm of escaped ex-Controllers when he showed up. The big boss slug himself, Visser Three. 

A Taxxon slithered up beside Visser Three and spoke. It was a weird, half-whistling sound. "Ssssweer trrreeesswew eeeesstrew."

Visser Three said nothing. He just looked at Jake's tiger-morph with the vertical slits that were his eyes.

<This Taxxon fool says you are wild animals,> Visser Three said. <He wants to know if he and his brothers can eat you.> He laughed silently. <But I know you are not animals. I know who and what you are. So... Not all of you Andalites died when I burned your ship.>

Gotta love how the villain fills in the gaps and gets it completely wrong.

<I compliment you on getting this far. But it will accomplish nothing. Because now, my brave Andalite warriors, it is time. Time to die.>

He began to morph.

<I acquired this body on the fourth moon of the second planet of a dying star. Like it?>

I did like it. I liked it a lot. Not sure what it’s called, but this morph was something special. I crept forward as his body twisted, stretched, bulged, and grew. He stood taller than Rachel’s elephant morph on eight thick legs. Eight comparatively spindly arms, each ending in three-fingered claws. To top off the grand monstrosity were eight serpentine necks ending in monocular heads with gaping fanged maws.

I almost forgot the best part. Those gaping maws don’t just have great big pointy teeth, they also superheat a tiny fleck of plasma that expands into a full blown fireball that they can then shoot with near pinpoint accuracy. 

I had to have it. 

I got a bit closer and acquired the octopedal pseudo-reptile, then snuck out of sight of everything. I switched to Swampert and crept out. I wasn’t going to interfere too much, but I wanted to help the Animorphs get a few more people out than just the one they would otherwise manage to rescue. 

I shot down a few fireballs and put out some of the fires they’d caused. That caught the Visser’s attention. 

<What’s this? One of the Andalites decides that the Earth animals are not good enough? Now that is the arrogance we know!> he crowed and shot a fireball at me. 

<You must tell me where you got such a wonderful morph> he said after I extinguished the fireball and the next three he sent at me. 

«Unlikely, Visser» I thought at him, almost gleeful at the fact that my telepathy worked while in morph. I could feel the shape of his minds from here, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Possibly because of the morph, possibly because of the eight heads. Either way, it was like trying to catch a greased bowling ball. The most I could do was blur his attention a little, like a fly buzzing at your face. 

With me distracting him, the Animorphs managed to get out nearly a dozen humans. None of them were Tom, and no Hork-Bajir made it out, but it was eight more than they’d made it out with in the book so I chalked it up as a win. 

As soon as they were clear, I made myself scarce. There was plenty of steam obscuring their vision, so it was fairly easy to make it to an unseen spot to portal out. 

I didn’t see Tobias on my way out, but I couldn’t have saved him anyway, it was too important to have him become a nothlit, a person trapped in morph. As harsh as that sounds, his life as a hawk was a big improvement to the one he had as a human. Eventually he’d learn the truth of his parentage, that Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul was his father and had married his mother in a timeline that was no longer extant, and his mother lost both her sight and her memory in an accident, and all of that was the result of the Ellimist and the Crayak playing their game for the galaxy. It was small consolation, but in a few months the Ellimist will restore his morphing power as thanks for helping to save two Hork-Bajir from the Yeerks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is more coming soon, I promise.
> 
>  
> 
> Relatively soon, at least.


	3. Jumper’s First Job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ellimist sends Jumper on her first job for him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update. Still not finished writing the whole thing, but here’s a few more chapters to tide you over

“I have your first job for you”

It was a few days after the foray into the Yeerk pool and I’d been playing around as an archaeopteryx in the abandoned construction site. It was a really fun little morph to be. When I was younger, I had thought that it was a big bird, like an eagle or an airborne emu, but it’s about the size of a largish crow. Being a carnivorous proto-bird, I kinda thought it would be a raptor, like a hawk or falcon, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t a power flier either, like geese or ducks are. Its version of flying was more of a gliding pounce. It could fly, somewhat well, if it caught a good thermal or started from a decent height, but it was still pretty clumsy in the air.

That being said, the archaeopteryx mind enjoyed being in the air. Unlike the booted eagle morph I’d picked up at the Gardens, the archaeopteryx had a sense of fun, and it thought climbing up half-built buildings and gliding back down to the ground was great fun, and I was happy to let it play for a bit and just go along for the ride.

Or at least I was until the Ellimist showed up again.

«I’m curious, Toomin. You are THE Ellimist, yes? Yet on more than one occasion you refer to yourself as AN Ellimist to the Animorphs» I thought projected to him as I circled down to the ground again. «Have you developed multiple personalities, viewing each member of your fractured psyche as a member of a race that is in fact the form you all inhabit, or are the satellites you’ve imbued with your self counted as a race unto themselves albeit ruled by the creator entity?»

“That’s something you’ll have to figure out yourself” he said, smiling faintly and folding his hands in front of him.

«That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking horse» I muttered, my feathers melting into skin and my beak softening to become lips as I demorphed. I was pleased that the supposedly all powerful being didn’t recognise the meme. Even if the show I’d seen late in the InFamous Jump had counterparts in other worlds, it was still fun to confuse entities that believed themselves omniscient. “Alright, so what’s the job?”

 

* * *

 

Short answer, bodyguard detail. On a planet that’s unpronounceable to species without at least two sets of vocal cords, there was a deep divide between two dominant factions tied closely to their religion. One faction interpreted the teachings one way, the other faction another, and the interpretations aren’t even incompatible, it’s simply a reprioritisation of ideals that are all but identical. This wasn’t my unbiased view, it was my interpretation of the information I got from Ellie as part of the background to my job. The person I was protecting was the head of a reformation party, dedicated to healing the rift between the two factions. They were due to make a speech that would cause ripples that would become waves of change. If they were killed before the speech, they’d be martyred which would cause ripples that would become waves of bloodshed. My job was to keep FSXučīzværwt alive for the next few days while Crayak sent minions to kill him and prevent reunification of the planet by peaceful means. If Crayak succeeded, the planet would be consumed in war for over a century then go on to wage war on the rest of its solar system once it reached interplanetary travel.

Yeah, protecting the party leader was definitely important.

FSXučīzværwt’s people were called the GVKeorījbsi, they looked like pale greenish, half-deflated beachballs on three stumpy legs, with two greeny-blue tennis ball eyes on top, and two stick figure arms on each side. They had wide mouths that opened like Beaker the Muppet’s, filled with rounded teeth, had two thin barbed tongues, and of course their annoying twin sets of vocal cords. They were a monosexual species, that only grew the necessary parts for reproduction every three years, with each individual developing both bits needed for baby making. Their technology level was a bit behind Earth’s, comparable to a mix of about mid 11th century China and late 14th century Europe.

I acquired the DNA of half a dozen random GVKeorījbsi to chimerafy into a disguise for myself, and the Ellimist gave me the standard sign on package that regular staff of his and Crayak’s get - omnilingualism, true sight, and immunity to any temporal shenanigans, except for direct influence by Ellimist or Crayak. I’d only keep it while in Ellie’s service and within his sphere of influence, which basically means for this Jump and within this galaxy. Still, very nice. Very useful, especially since I can’t touch the Time Matrix, even to move it away from where I know it’s going to be found.

I managed to squirm my way into FSXučīzværwt’s entourage as a hanger-on and nominal secretary’s secretary’s secretary or some such. I wasn’t really paying attention too much to my position if I’m being honest, I just needed to stick by their side to keep them safe for the next five days.

It was two days before the first attack happened, and that’s when I really found out the extent of what I can and can’t do in morph. Half a dozen bastards ambushed us on the road from one conglomerative hive-like city to the next.

They used macuahuitl-like blades and some kind of projectile weapon that seemed to be a cross between a crossbow and a gun, using a gunpowder equivalent to launch a dart at near-supersonic speed.

I barely managed to bring up a TK barrier, and almost collapsed with the effort it took. One of the others helped me stand, worried I’d been hit. I reassured them and tried to bring up an ice shield to no avail. Psychic powers were mental and I could use them at reduced power, but my Conduit and Pokémon powers were biological and I could only use them as me. That’s probably something I should’ve already figured out, rather than waiting until mid-battle to try. It was really stupid of me to wait so long.

With what power I had, I could throw off their aim and redirect their blows, just little things that could be viewed as luck if you didn’t know I was interfering.

I nearly passed out with the effort of protecting FSXučīzværwt and their companions, and by the end of the fighting I had barely half an hour left in morph. I wasn’t in a good position, so I had to do a bit of sleight of hand to make sure I didn’t become a nothlit or lose my position within the entourage.

I waited until they were done fussing over me and turned their attentions towards FSXučīzværwt themself. A moment later, I was through a portal and demorphing, and Lillie was hopping through it in a copy of my GVKeorījbs morph. It was only for a couple of minutes, but it was important that “I” was still seen around. If I disappeared whenever something strange happened, I’d likely come under suspicion. This wasn’t a comic book after all, they’d notice if every time Peter Parker ran off, Spider-Man swung in. I took a five minute breather, then Lillie and I swapped back when they weren’t paying attention.

 

The rest of the trip was uneventful, but as soon as we got to our collective chamber in the city, we found a great big toothy beastie camping out inside. It looked like a giant boar crossed with a bear crossed with a chainsaw. I guess those tusks are what those would-be assassins were using for blades. Nice to know the answer to a question I never asked.

We closed the doors before it noticed us, and while a couple of others went to find someone to get rid of it, I peeked through a crack and opened a small portal by the thing’s foot, just large enough for Cuddles to reach a paw through to acquire it.

It took about an hour for professional wranglers to come get rid of it and I’d had to do another swap with Lillie to keep my cover. On the plus side, we now had a flriēek morph to play with.

 

The third and final attempt came the day of the speech. Just before the speech, in fact, right outside the amphitheatre near the bottom of the hive-like city. I was ready this time. Lillie had gotten another GVKeorījbs morph and was sitting on the back of Cuddles in flriēek morph to guide him. Turns out that the beasts are herbivores and all but blind. They charge into trees, splitting them open with with their chainsaw tusks, and then drink up the sap with a straw-like tongue. They do have great sense of smell and hearing, and charge towards anything that smells or sounds like a threat. They’re also as dumb as bricks and have been known to attack large rocks that smell slightly different to other rocks they’ve smelled before, believing them to be threats.

As soon as the band attacked, wielding the same weapons as the last lot, I opened a portal and let Lillie and Cuddles charge out, trampling a good third of the buggers in one go, and nearly the same again on their next rout.

In the confusion from their sudden appearance, I slipped into a portal and demorphed. I closed that one and opened another higher up for a bird’s eye view. From there, I sniped the last dozen or so with icicles, either killing them or pinning them to the ground for the police equivalent to scoop up later.

The whole thing was over in less than ten minutes. I opened a portal for the other two, remorphed my GVKeorījbs, hopped out high enough to sustain a few minor injuries, closed the portals, and acted like I’d been knocked down by one of the antagonists.

 

Although delayed by an hour or so, FSXučīzværwt still went on to deliver their speech without a hitch. The Ellimist filled me in on some of the ripples as he transported me home, telling me that not only did the factions unite, there were young ones that would be inspired by the speech and become great leaders, and the events leading up to the speech would become the basis of a interstellarly best-selling book which would, in time, go on to inspire even greater acts. I kinda got the feeling that reunifying the GVKeorījbsi factions was of secondary importance to the book. Ripples causing ripples indeed.


	4. This Bites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V3 has a cool morph and Jumper wants it, then she goes for her second Ellimist sponsored gig

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a pune or a play on words. I’m quite pleased with it

“Hey, when have you...” I turned to the spot where Ellie had been and sighed, “dropped me. Bugger.”

I could tell the time no problem, half an hour after I’d been taken, but I couldn’t tell if the week I’d spent on another world had passed on Earth or if he’d brought me back the same day. It kind of screwed me over since if it was the same day, then tomorrow the Animorphs would be sneaking into Chapman’s house and the day after Rachel would get brought to V3, who would then turn into a giant craggy monster that I’d like to steal. If it wasn’t the same day, then I had anywhere up to a month before Tobias had an Identity crisis then maybe another three weeks after that before Ax sends out his distress signal.

Wait! The interwebs can help! I went to my laptop and connected to my Warehouse internet so I didn’t have to deal with mid-90’s dialup. I looked at every proto-YouTube and news site I could find, trying to find footage of an elephant crashing a used car salesman’s ad and freeing a red-tailed hawk.

Damn. Sixteen hits from a week ago. That means Ax will be calling out in a fortnight or so. I missed out on the rocklike beastie, but I wouldn’t miss getting the mardrut, a great big purpley-red fish thing from the Andalite home world’s third moon. That one seems like a lot of fun to play with. I guess it’s time to try out some aquatic morphs, starting with Moby Shark.

 

 _Duunnn dunnn... Duuuunnnn duun... Duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn!_ Megalodon is megalo-good. We like this one, we like this one very much. Its mind is simple, the way a razor blade is simple, easy to control until it finds blood and then it seeks it out unerringly. This thing is the ultimate predator, it only died out because of the ice ages freezing their mating areas and a decline in prey. If it had adapted to hunting smaller prey and eating constantly, and mating in colder climates, they’d still be around now, and absolutely no one would set foot in the water out of fear of them. Jaws scared people away from the water for years, the mere thought that this big bastard was still around would cause national panic. Actually, thanks to global warming, the world is just about perfect for megalodons to live in, so I am a very happy giant fish right now.

 

With the meg, the coelacanth (super dumb fish, absolutely nothing going on upstairs, but really good at surviving), my Swampert form, a dolphin morph from the Gardens, and a marine chimera I made using the meg, cuttlefish, blue-ringed octopus, and cone snail, I was all set to head down to the dome.

I started having the dreams of a presence under the ocean that night. Unlike the Animorphs, I knew what they meant: Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, younger brother of Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul and unknowing uncle of Tobias, was sending out a distress signal to any Andalites within range. Unfortunately for him, the only Andalite in range was Alloran-Semitur-Corass, the host of Visser Three. His signal does reach allies though: Tobias, who is technically half Andalite, and Cassie, who is an estreen, which is close enough for the purposes of the distress signal apparently.

I checked recordings of the bugs I’d had Archie place in Cassie’s barn, AKA the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, to see if they’d come up with their plan yet, or had at least discussed the dreams.

I was in luck, they were heading out tomorrow, which meant I would be too, albeit a bit after them to intercept V3 in morph. Maybe I’ll go in as part of his retinue... No, that wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t be able to get on his ship even disguised as a Controller, he was paranoid enough to only have trusted Controllers on his crew. It’s just about the only sensible thing he does really. The only reason he got promoted to Visser was because he got an Andalite host and had a soupçon of cunning, not that he used it very often. Most of his plots tend to be heavy handed, relying on brute force to overcome obstacles. It’s no wonder that his plans were consistently stymied by amateur guerrilla fighters.

 

I decided to just follow the Animorphs at a distance and see what I could do.

What I could do was play around in the water for a couple hours, seeing how much water I could summon and/or control outside of my Swampert form. Not much at all really, a decent Water Gun from my hands, a Bubblebeam from my mouth, and I could use Surf to, well, surf without a board or a Mantine. I spent a fun hour or so slip’n’sliding across the surface of the ocean until I spotted the telltale ripple of a cloaking device that meant V3’s Blade Ship was descending. I dropped underwater, changed to Swampert, and morphed dolphin, letting my skin turn rubbery and the dolphin’s happy-go-lucky mind wash over me, not letting it take hold too much though, getting lost in the dolphin’s pure joyousness was far too easy and far too tempting.

I swam away a bit, acting like a regular dolphin while I waited for Visser to jump out and morph. The Taxxons had been deployed, so it was only a matter of minutes before he did.

Once he did, I demorphed and swam behind him trying to get close enough to acquire the mardrut from him. It was difficult since, in addition to the hundreds of fishy tails that cover its back, a mardrut also has three large chambers that act like impellers. Swampert was faster, but I didn’t have the same acceleration it did which was the problem. I still managed to snag it though, then I pulled back to morph again.

The megalodon is much faster than the mardrut, as both I and the Visser soon learned.

I took a big chunk out of his left impeller chamber as he gained on the four dolphins and a tiger shark that were the Animorphs.

«Don’t worry kids, a pod of Great Ones is on the way now» I told them, forcing myself away from the reddish purple blood of the mardrut. It didn’t register on the giant shark’s senses as something to frenzy about, but it was still pushing the right buttons to eat more.

As I swam away, I heard Visser Three hurling curses at me, a confused thank you from a couple of the Animorphs, and the song of the Great Ones, what the barely-scraping sapient dolphins call whales.

I grinned as only sharks can as I heard the whale-on-mardrut impacts that caused the Visser to turn tails and flee. I’m sure that I’ve given them some questions, but playing mystery shark was fun. I’ll give them a proper introduction later, once they’ve met Erek.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Visser wouldn’t be using any interesting morphs for the better part of a year, and the Animorphs won’t run into the Chee for another five or six months. No, the next thing they encounter is Visser One, the highest ranking Yeerk outside of the Council of Thirteen, who took a human host as an advanced scout on Earth. This host will be what sells Marco on fighting the Yeerks, rather than sitting back and waiting for the Andalites to come clean up this mess. Having your supposedly dead mother turn out to be the leader of an enemy force is enough to shock anyone. It was the turning point for him, and a deeply personal one at that, so I wasn’t going to touch it.

Instead, I’m going to fix up my Andalite fighter, cook up some more chimeric morphs, and play merry hell across Yeerk invasion. It’s mostly across the North American continent, so I’m thinking we’ll be having a sabotage road trip across the U.S. of A.

 

Unfortunately, that had to wait for a while. The Ellimist pulled me out again while I was browsing vehicles, since the only mode of transportation I had was my single-seater bicycle.

“This time you’ll be doing something a little different” he told me, pulling me out of the lot and into what was effectively his mind palace. “You have to break up a group that threatens to destabilise a country, which would lead to wars and eventual global devastation.”

“That sounds suspiciously easy. What’s the catch?” I asked, thinking of any number of nasties that Crayak might throw my way on a planet he doesn’t have to hold back on. Obviously the Howlers were an option, but I doubted I’d get thrown to them so soon.

“No catch, you will simply have to get past a few sentients interested in—” he started to explain before I interrupted.

“Sapients, not sentients” I corrected him.

“I beg your pardon?” He asked, looking genuinely confused.

“You keep using sentients when you mean sapients. It’s a common mistake, but one I think should be addressed.” I explained. “Sentience is the ability to perceive or feel things, and sapience is the ability to think or reason. All creatures are sentient, but not all are sapient. It might not seem like a big difference, but it’s a fairly significant one.”

“Very well,” he continued, raising an almost Vulcan eyebrow at me. I think it may have been the first time anyone had interrupted him, let alone corrected him, since he became nigh omnipotent. “You will simply have to get past a few _sapients_ interested in safeguarding this group for their own interests. I wish you luck.”

With that, I was unceremoniously left in a desert at night with three moons hanging in the sky.

“I shouldn’t’ve corrected him before getting all the details” I muttered to myself, looking around to see if there were any clues as to my destination. I spied a few low, rounded, stone buildings in the distance, so I headed that way, hoping for the best.

I barely got twenty metres when the sand gave out from under me into a huge shifting pit, in the centre of which was some kind of arthropod, half buried in the sand trap it had made. Looking like the end result of a antlion’s one night stand with a scorpion, it had a dozen claws at the end of its visible forelegs, bladed mandibles the size of my arms, and five thrashing stingers emerging from its back, ready to snag me and drag me close enough to pull apart into bite sized chunks.

I had to use TK to halt myself outside of acquiring range because otherwise those stingers would be able to reach me. I guess now’s when I test the theory of being able to still a creature by using telepathy.

The thing’s mind was unlike anything I’d felt before, and finding a way to still it was like trying to fit a USB into a computer port, I kept turning it around and around until it slotted in perfectly the way I tried it the first time.

The beast stilled, its stingers drooping to the sand around it, and I floated closer, keeping a tight hold on its mind (and boy did doing those two at the same time give me a headache), and acquired it. Once I flew out of range of the stingers, I released my mental hold on its mind and it thrashed about trying to get me but I was too far gone already, even when it lifted its long body out of the sand, revealing an eight and a half metre long body with an identical head and stingers arrangement on the other end. What a fascinating creature, although it raises the Catdog question - how does it poop?

 

I floated a centimetre above the sand for the rest of my journey. I didn’t want to be too obvious about my powers but I didn’t want to fall into any more sand pits either.

I reached the buildings a few minutes before sunrise, and a glorious one it was too. The planet’s sun hung in the air, a burning golden red, three times the size of Earth’s, though whether that was because it was larger or closer I didn’t know.

There was a flurry of activity and I dropped into a portal, closing it to only a peephole in the sand to see what the locals looked like. They were mostly human looking, with large eyes and black sclera like natural sunglasses, bald heads, ruddy brown skin, and digitigrade legs that ended in three-toed camel-like feet.

I acquired any that got close, combining them to make a new person, and scanned their minds to learn what I could.

Yep, this was definitely the group I wanted. These were just the local supporters though, the real instigators were foreigners with their own agenda that just happened to align with this lot’s goals. Looking deeper to find a picture of the foreigners, I swore to myself. They were fucking Howlers. Non-weaponised Howlers, but Howlers nonetheless. I suppose these were Crayak’s version of insurgents or scouts, for use when he wants to set a planet to war with itself or others, rather than just wiping out the entire race, like with the Pemalites or the Iskoort.

That made things very simple. I was originally going to infiltrate them, try to cause internal strife, and see if I could destroy them from the inside out. That was before I knew what I was really up against. No catch my arse. Oh well, Plan B is far more fun, and far less subtle.

 

Most of the not-Howlers ran out when they heard the commotion. When they saw me, I could tell they wished they had been given better weapons, not just the souped up 21st Earth century equivalent equipment they were using to arm the locals. What good would mere bullets or even compact rockets do against a rampaging spinosaurus?

My cackling laughter echoed through their minds as I destroyed the buildings, tore apart anyone within reach, their bullets bounced off my thick hide, and their rockets simply scratched and slightly staggered me.

One thing that surprised me about the spiny was the spine itself. It had small feathers across its back and spine, the colour of ferns and moss. I hadn’t thought of such a large beast being an ambush predator, but that’s what it seemed to look like. The mind had a few basic instincts for it - lay still, wait until prey is close, attack swiftly - but they were secondary to the hunting instincts it had, so maybe it was an ambusher when it was small and needed less food to survive.

None of that was relevant now, of course. Now I was just ripping, rending, and wrecking everything in the area, and having a grand old time in doing so.

An hour’s rampage later, I demorphed in the middle of the rubble and looked at the carnage I had wrought. I nodded to myself in satisfaction and started looking in each surviving shelter for anyone I’d missed.

I found a couple of not-Howlers who had been half crushed but survived, so I acquired them, then hit them with an icy shatter blast each.

“That was faster than I anticipated” said the Ellimist, appearing behind me.

“Well when I’m up against the Big Bad’s direct underlings, I don’t exactly want to waste time,” I replied, turning to face him. “That’s a detail I would’ve liked to have known.”

“It was irrelevant.” He shrugged. “Whether they reported to Crayak, the Yeerks, or simply the country’s leader, your objective would be the same.”

While we spoke, the background shifted into the car lot where he’d first picked me up.

“Maybe so, but details are always important.” I said, brandishing a finger under his long pointy nose. “Holding out like that can make things incredibly difficult. If I hadn’t had out of context powers, I doubt this would’ve been so simple.”

“If you hadn’t had those powers, you wouldn’t have been chosen as my emissary” he retorted

“If I hadn’t chosen the drawback in the first place I wouldn’t be your dogsbody.” I shot back.

He just smiled enigmatically and disappeared, allowing time to resume around me.

“Yeah, Chan probably would’ve assigned me to him anyway,” I muttered to myself. “I got saddled with Crayak knowing about me after all.”

While I was grouching and grumbling, a perky sales assistant came to talk to me using her best customer service voice and wearing her best fake smile, the ones that mostly get saved for the disgruntled soccer mums and super rich customers. As far as I knew I was neither, so the bazillion watt smile and hyper-cheery voice caught me off guard. She told me that the vehicle Mr Ellimist had purchased was ready for me to pick up.

It was a top of the line RV, perfect for long road trips, capable of on- and off-road driving, and since I (or rather Mr Ellimist) was the 10,000th customer I got a lifetime’s supply of free fuel.

It was a pretty nice gift, although if I know Toomin it probably means he has plans that involve me using this RV and there’s a 50/50 chance I’m not gonna like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was tempted to put another pun in the summary, but I couldn’t make it sound natural
> 
> The description of the spinosaurus having mossy feathers and starting life as an ambush predator has no scientific evidence, I just liked the idea of it


	5. Meeting the Animorphs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Jumper finally officially meets the Animorphs

The next few months were quite fun. Lillie, Cuddles, and I would take hour and a half shifts riding on the roof in Vanarx morph to snuff out Controllers as we drove, and when we had the time I taught Gladys, Sally, and Archie how to drive. Sally had troubles with her tail, Archie kept forgetting his turn signal and phased his shadowy appendages through the pedals more than a few times, and Gladys accidentally put her foot through the floor when she tried to use the clutch.

Over the course of four months, we hunted down a dozen score Controllers we came across while travelling the country, destroyed half a dozen Yeerk pools, and got three Bug fighters, one of which I stripped for parts to fix the Andalite fighter.

 

That last month before I returned to Animorphs Central, I practised flying the Bugs. I attracted a couple of patrols to my location and got shot down the first time I went out in one, after which I figured out how to remove the three seperate ways the Yeerks could track my second Bug.

Once I was sure I was free of bugs, we were zipping around in that thing, no problem. We even managed to collect another four Bugs to refill my collection. We did strip three for parts though, because there wasn’t room in the stacks of shelves that filled two thirds of my Warehouse and I was still saving room for the Blade Ship. I just wish I had a garage or a space station where I could keep these things because that would be so much easier.

We got back to the city the day of the big outdoor concert. We parked the cloaked Bug over where they were setting up the stage and waited. My big entrance into the Animorphs’ lives wouldn’t happen for a few days, so I figured we could relax for a while and listen to some jen-yoo-wine 90’s music. I may also have picked out a few Controllers in the staff and audience and Vanarx’ed their Yeerks, but that’s purely conjecture.

 

A bit over a week later, I got a ping from the bug on Marco’s phone telling me they’d be infiltrating the Matcom building that night to recover the Pemalite Crystal, a macguffin capable of rewriting the base code of the super advanced (but not quite clarketech) android Chee. If things were left to unfold naturally, the Animorphs would almost die, Erek would commit violence so atrocious that it had to be left unsaid lest the books be upgraded from YA to Adult Fiction, and the Chee would no longer be able to say that they had never taken a life in their millennia of existence. No, now was the time for me to interfere.

 

* * *

_ScreeEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEET!_

_The alarm was howling as the Animorphs in their various battle morphs burst through the final door between them and freedom; and between them and the door were twenty human Controllers with automatic rifles, and behind those were about two dozen Hork-Bajir Controllers, in all their bladed saurian glory. And a far worse sound than just an alarm:_

_Cha-KLICK!_

_The human Controllers had cocked their rifles, chambering a round. If they fired, they’d be blown apart before they could twitch._

_A human-Controller stepped out in front. She was a nice-looking, late middle-aged woman wearing normal street clothes. She had bleached blond hair. She could have been someone's grandmother._

_"So. The Andalite bandits," she said. Her face was twitching with tension, but she tried to sound calm. "You've done me a big favour. When I turn you over to Visser Three he'll promote me two grades. Maybe three!"_

_< Or he may decide to destroy you for letting us get this far,> Ax said coolly._

_"Surrender. You can't escape," the woman snapped. "I'd rather take you alive, but the Visser would still be happy to have your corpses."_

_The Animorphs stared at her. And they stared at the muzzles of the twenty automatic rifles that were leveled at them._

_The gorilla that was Marco in morph held up his hand. Between his thick, brutish fingers he held the Pemalite crystal._

_The woman turned as pale as her hair. "Give me that."_

_He shook his big gorilla head._

_"Lower those guns," the woman snapped._

_"What?" some guy behind her yelled. "We have them! We have them cold!"_

_The woman's jaw twitched again, but she stayed in control. "What do you think a bullet would do to that crystal?"_

_"But the odds that a bullet would hit the crystal . . . It's not going to happen."_

_The woman smiled grimly. "That crystal is worth more than the mother ship and everything in it," she said. Then she started yelling. "You want to shoot? Go ahead, fool! If you hit the crystal, you can explain it to Visser Three."_

_She got a grip on herself while the guy who had spoken out decided he was not interested in explaining anything to Visser Three._

_"All human Controllers, back. Weapons on safety," the woman snapped._

_The rifles faltered, then lowered toward the ground._

_But the so-called Andalite bandits knew better than to breathe a sigh of relief. They knew what was coming next._

_The woman looked right at Marco and smiled. "Hork-Bajir, forward."_

_The Hork-Bajir had once been a gentle, decent race before they were all enslaved by the Yeerks. It wasn’t known by anyone else now, but the long blades that Hork-Bajir had on their wrists, elbows, and knees were actually for stripping bark from the giant trees of their home world for food. They’d been genetically engineered to be planetary gardeners by a race of nut jobs with hard-ons for “improving” nature. Unfortunately when the Yeerks came, the creators changed their own biology to prevent being taken as hosts and ignored their creations. All Hork-Bajir were Controllers now._

_Just by looking at them though, it was hard to believe the Hork-Bajir had ever been the sweethearts of the galaxy. They looked like death on two legs: seven feet tall, eight, if you counted the forward-raked blades that protruded from the top of their snake-heads. They had blades at their elbows, blades at their wrists, blades at their knees. They had huge claw-feet like tyrannosaurs, and a short, thick tail that ended in cruel-looking spikes._

_They were walking razor blades. All sharp edges and lightning speed._

_The Animorphs had fought Hork-Bajir warriors before. Together, they could handle maybe half a dozen or so. There were four times that many blocking their exit._

_Then, behind the Hork-Bajir, beyond the retreating human-Controllers, outside the building, staring horror-stricken through the glass, was Erek._

_Erek, who could do nothing at all to help them. Who was helpless to do anything but witness their slaughter._

_“Attack," the woman said. Her voice was nearly a whisper._

_The Hork-Bajir leaped forward, a wall of slashing, whirling blades._

* * *

 

As the Animorphs squared up against the hopeless odds, I made my entrance. I’d planned this in my head for a while, and I’d be lying if I hadn’t gone for the most dramatic timing possible.

I strode past the helpless android as the Animorphs were being torn to shreds by the Hork-Bajir Controllers, telekinetically blasting the doors off their hinges and knocking down the lines of watching human Controllers, and with a wave of carefully controlled ice I froze every Hork-Bajir where they stood, covering them up to their necks.

“Better get outside Animorphs, I’ll finish up here.” I told them, standing in the middle of the frozen carnage, the Animorphs looking like they’d gone through a thresher. “I will be taking that, however.”

I easily lifted the Pemalite Crystal out of Marco’s weakened grip using telekinesis and dropped it into my morph pocket fanny pack.

When they started to object and step up to me, I just glared at them.

«I said get outside» I told them as I started to morph into the octofire beast I acquired from V3 on their first mission as Animorphs.

As soon as they were out, I gave a cursory scan of the guards to make sure there were no innocents. Nope, all of them, HB and human, were either voluntary hosts, complicit in the Yeerk invasion, or were so horribly mentally tortured that death would be a mercy.

 

I walked out of the now burning building, my backwards facing heads firing off a couple more flaming plasma bursts, and faced the still morphed Animorphs.

«You should really demorph soon. You’re liable to pass out from blood loss otherwise» I told them as I did so myself. I watched them as they failed to comply with my suggestion. I sighed and turned to Ax. “Would you talk some sense into Prince Jake, Aximili?”

<Don't call me Prince> Jake said reflexively, and they collectively froze. Ax whipped his tail up to my throat, and I could hear their conversation about me as I listened to their thoughts.

“While they deliberate about whether or not I’m a Controller,” I said to Erek, with a telepathic «I’m pretty obviously not, by the way» aside to the Animorphs, “I’d like to talk to you about your hologram. The Pemalites were incredibly advanced, but apparently hard-light holograms are unheard of around here, so does that mean you wear a hologram straight over your android form? Or do you have a forcefield layer underneath it? Either way seems fairly problematical to my mind”

The group had stopped talking and they were all staring at me.

“What? I’m curious. I’d’ve asked privately, but I don’t know if my telepathy works on sapient machines,” I shrugged when they continued to stare. I cocked my head at the sound of sirens in the distance. “Not sure if you can hear those yet, you probably can, Erek, but those sirens mean fire trucks, ambulances, and police. All of which will be chockers with Controllers since this was a fairly major front corporation for them. I’d suggest we either move away from the scene of the crime, or Erek can extend his hologram over us so we can watch first responders take care of the fire and look for all the hidden alien tech that was either stolen or destroyed. Ooh, that’s another question, how far can your hologram extend? And if you have one, are you able to extend your forcefield as well? No, wait, sorry, that can wait until later.”

I was keenly aware of the continued stares.

<Who is this guy?> I hear Rachel ask her friends.

«I’m Jade, nice to meet you too, Rachel» I said, looking the grizzly bear right in the eye. «The details are a little complicated, but I work for the Ellimist part-time.»

<So the Ellimist sent you here to interfere?> Jake asked.

“Nope, this was all me. I knew what would happen otherwise. I am serious about those sirens, by the way,” I said as they came within earshot of the animals. “Maybe we can talk about this more tomorrow. We can all meet at the Chee’s underground park. I’ll bring the Pemalite Crystal with me.”

<I think you should give it to Erek now. We just risked our necks getting it> Rachel said, giving a little bear snarl. It was undercut somewhat by her missing a forepaw and part of her upper lip.

“And since I pulled your fat out of the fire, I think I should hold onto it for now,” I said. “I’ll swing by tomorrow arvo, about four thirty. That should give you all enough time to get there after school. I’ll see you then.”

Before they could argue any more, I dropped through a pair of portals to my safe house, closing them tight as soon as I passed through.

“I think that went well.” I said to the waiting Lillie.

 

* * *

 

The next day, I spent a few hours looking for other Chee by trying to find people who had no smell, I couldn’t read the minds of, and who liked dogs. I found a grand total of zero. Then again, since I was looking during the day on a Wednesday, most of them would be at work or school like everyone else.

I rocked up at Erek’s house an hour and a half before I told the Animorphs to arrive with Granita and Sparkles. I asked his ‘dad’ if I could go down to their underground park so my dogs could play with theirs. That got me entry with no problem, even if my dogs were actually canid Pokémon with no relation to Earth dogs or the Pemalites. It was difficult for me, but I managed to not run my mouth with constant questions for the androids.

A bit over an hour later Erek came down with five new dogs: a golden retriever, an Irish setter, a big slobbery St. Bernard, a Jack Russell, and a blue heeler. Yeah, because that wouldn’t raise any suspicions at all.

«You guys really need to get better at the whole subtlety thing» I told them as I trotted over to them in my own dog morph, a chimera I made from a choc lab, a fox terrier, and a German Shepard. «Try mixing up your numbers a bit, or half of you come in a bug morph on the others’ backs. You’ve done it before, do it more often. Oh, and Jake,» I turned to the golden retriever, «Homer is instantly recognisable to anyone who knows him, so you might want to pick up another dog morph.»

The dogs gave each other very human glances and I could hear them talking amongst themselves, Marco being sarcastic and Ax warning the others about trusting anyone who associates themselves with the Ellimist.

«I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Ellimist, Ax. He is a tricksy bastard, but I’m not currently on the job for him, so let’s all demorph and talk like civilised sapients» I said, taking my own advice and changing back to human. “I’ve already invited Marie to join us for this discussion”

They hesitated, but as I had already demorphed, they did so too. As I thought, Rachel had been the St. Bernard, Cassie the Jack Russell, and Ax the blue heeler. I guess he liked the colour.

“Come on, I brought a picnic and presents, so let’s talk over lunch” I said beckoning the six of them to follow me.

Maria was sitting on the blanket I’d spread out, with a handful of actual dogs as well as Sparkles and Granita gambolling or sprawled out nearby.

“Maria and I have already had a lively conversation about how silence is compliance,” I said, sitting down next to the Chee with the old lady appearance, who winced a little at my words. I felt a minor pang of guilt at how hard I went at her, but I was trying to change a mind stuck in a millennia old rut, so using visceral language and examples was necessary. It hadn’t escaped my notice that all the Chee holograms were of average looking white people. It might’ve made for good camouflage, but it also summed up the Chee outlook in one go. It’s easy to preach non-interference when you’re not being affected. After being verbally berated for half an hour and having all her arguments shot down, she had agreed that non-violent protest would be acceptable to her faction’s views.

“She’s agreed that gathering and passing on information about the Yeerks’ activities to you six is something that she, and those like her, would be able to do. It will be mostly passive information gathering though, since they are still reluctant to do more than dip their toes in.” I held up a hand to forestall her argument and continued. “That brings me to my first gift. For the Chee who wish to be more ...proactive in their resistance, I’ve got this.”

I brought out the Pemalite Crystal, which caused Maria’s eyes to widen and Erek’s hands to twitch as if he wanted to try to snatch it from me.

“Non-lethal violence. You’ll be able to wrestle with those you wish to, but you’ll be unable to kill anyone. You can knock someone out for a few minutes, or dislocate a joint, but you won’t be breaking any bones on purpose. I also kept a limiter that prevents you from holding someone so another can kill them. I’ve put a lot of thought into this, ever since I first knew about the predicament I’ve had the idea and I’ve had plenty of time to refine it since then. Be grateful you didn’t get the crystal last night, Erek. Your actions would have scarred you for life.”

The crystal, actually a quantum level computer chip orders of magnitude more advanced than anything the Andalites have, sent out the software update I’d perfected. I had deliberately left a few loopholes, because even immortal androids need to learn life lessons. I looked like I put the crystal back in my fanny pack, but I actually opened a tiny portal to the Warehouse where it would be kept safe from everyone who wasn’t me or mine.

“My next gift is sandwiches! All the best ones from all across the country, as well as some from Canada, because I’m still determined to find big dogs in Newfoundland and Labrador in every universe I go to” I grinned widely, opening the large wicker basket. They’d been fresh made this morning when I’d portalled to all the best delis I’d visited on my road trip. I’d found that I couldn’t open portals to places I’d been to in InFamous-verse when I tried to go to Chicago without visiting it in Animorphs-verse. I figured I’d have to actually travel everywhere again if I wanted to be able to fast travel through my Warehouse. That also meant no Antarctica escape route this time round.

While we ate, Ax crushing his salad sandwiches underhoof and being surprised they tasted so good, the Animorphs interrogated me about my relationship with Ellie and about my actions today and yesterday.

I explained that I was actually a bigger fish’s play toy and had been subcontracted to Ellie for the duration of my time in this world, essentially as payment for some extra abilities. No, I wasn’t an alien like Ax, I was extra-universal not extra-terrestrial. The psychic and ice powers weren’t part of my deal for this world, but I did have a few extra morphing techniques that wouldn’t be available until a while after the Andalite/Yeerk War, if ever.

“...but I’m not giving away what those might be just yet. Suffice to say, extinct sharks don’t take bites out of Vissers every day of the week.” I grinned and winked as realisation dawned on them. “Now, a few final things for you.”

I spoke directly into each of their minds, not letting the others hear what I was saying to their fellows.

«Rachel, ease back on the bloodlust, it’s okay to be scared. You don’t have to lash out every time to prove you’re strong.»

«Jake, being the leader means making hard choices. Not all of them will be right and not all of them will be good. Don’t let that stop you from trying your best. Second guessing yourself after the fact won’t help anyone, learn from your mistakes and move forward so you don’t make them again.»

«Marco, reign in the ego. You’re way cuter when you’re being yourself. Girls don’t like it when you try to be someone you’re not, and you’ll not like it much either. Keep up the questions and sarcasm though, that shit is gold.»

«Cassie, never stop trying to be kind. Your heart is in the right place, don’t let the hard times harden it. You might have to do terrible things in this war, but the greater good is nothing without the smaller goods.»

«Ax, you’re not your brother. Stop living in his shadow, trying to live up to him. He wasn’t perfect and neither are you. These humans are your friends, trust them and you’ll find you’re better off than you thought you could ever be. The Andalites aren’t infallible, so don’t be surprised when they turn out to have done something wrong.»

I also implanted a minor aversion to share my words, nothing too obvious, just a feeling that they were private.

“Visser Three is just a rank. The Yeerk’s real name is Esplin-9466. It really pisses him off when you call him that and it’s hilarious. And finally, this is for you, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.”

From my pouch, I pulled out a small hologram projector of Andalite design. I flicked it on, the picture of Ax, Elfangor, and their parents floated above the small domed device. I passed it to Ax, who turned his stalk eyes to me in a thankful, disbelieving stare.

“And with that, I take my leave,” I said quietly, standing up. “You can keep the blanket and basket if you like. Sparkles, Granita, come!”

With my Pokémon by my side, we dropped through my portal into the Warehouse, leaving the Animorphs and the Chee to discuss the afternoon’s business amongst themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is taking longer than I thought it would to write. There’s a lot of books to unpack, as well as the Ellimist’s jobs, although to be honest I’m mostly using those to flesh out the story. If I was to focus fully on them it would make a whole extra story in and of itself. Regardless, this isn’t finished yet but I am still writing


	6. Jumper VS the Andalite Homeworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I finally update this thing after months of letting it slide, and the Jumper gets dropped in Andalite crap by the Ellimist

 

And so it went for the next 8 months. I’d pop up in the Animorphs’ lives in an exotic morph of some kind, nick V3’s alien morphs, go gallivanting around for Ellie against rising challenges thrown around by Crayak, and travelled to various Yeerk hotspots that disappeared under suspicious circumstances. 

 

“You are shitting me.” I said, completely deadpan and absolutely blindsided.

“Indeed I am not ‘shitting’ you,” the Ellimist replied, very carefully stating the expletive, as one might scoop up dog crap left on your lawn by your neighbour’s annoying chihuahua. “You will be travelling to the Andalite home world to prevent Andalite traitors from allowing Yeerks access to the planet or morphing technology. If you fail, no matter what the Animorphs accomplish, the Yeerks will win. You will have to be careful as well, because if you’re seen to be human you will likely be mistaken for a Controller and turn opinion against Earth regardless of evidence to the contrary. I bid you good luck.”

Holy fucking shit. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I didn’t expect to be doing anything for Toomin that infringed on the plot. This is incredibly heavy man. I’m pretty sure this is after the Animorphs got whisked away to Leera (an astronomically unlikely trip orchestrated by the Ellimist no doubt), since the last time I met with them, they had just dealt with David, the traitorous arsehole, which means that the upper echelons’ll be aware of traitors in their Electorate so they’ll likely be on high alert. That means that whatever is gonna happen is gonna be biiiiiiigggg... Fuck me, I'm walking into a coup, aren’t I? That’s the only thing I can think of that’ll mean giving over the Andalite home world to the Yeerks.

Then again, Andalite society is a crap bag of xenophobia, sexism, authoritarianism, and elitism. Maybe a small coup would be a good thing, shake things up enough for stuff to change. Unfortunately, I don’t have the power or foresight to craft the upcoming trouble into something better. Maybe if I had more details, but I’m going in blind here so my best bet is to just stop it as best I can.

 

* * *

 

I spent five weeks stationed on one of the moons of the Andalite homeworld, slowly infiltrating the defence network computers to find any hint of tampering, adding myself or Lillie to any boarding parties of ships trying to enter local space, and casually interrogating anyone I could. I would’ve liked to have gone faster, but I had to familiarise myself with all the tech they had here, we could only really talk to anyone our rank even semi-casually, and I had to be careful with telepathic probing since Andalites are more alert to them, what with them being thought speakers.

Finally, after an Andalite month, we managed to find a couple of good leads. Lillie had been on a boarding party to a Skrit-Na ship when the Prince (which is a rank, not royalty) had ordered everyone but a single warrior off the ship while they inspected it, not suspicious in and of itself given the size of a Skrit-Na vessel, but when they were transporting ‘free’ Hork-Bajir and the Prince closed the vessel door for a good half hour, it added up to something pretty hinky. Digging a little deeper, I found that the shift schedule had been tampered with, more so than my benign adjustments.

I morphed to cockroach, a transformation that is truly disgusting no matter how many times you do it, and snuck into the Prince’s quarters. In there I found a curious device, it looked something like a metal fishbowl with a solar lamp and a radar dish attached to the top, all of which was mounted on box that could easily pass as a closed early model laptop with the corners rounded off. Inside the bowl was a small knobbly protrusion and filled with a sludgy liquid the colour of molten lead. This was obviously some kind of Yeerk communicator for when they didn’t have a host body; the lamp bit was for Kandrona rays and the dish for sending and receiving messages as thought-speak.

That detail made me smile a little; after Ax had denigrated humanity’s use of dishes in the telescopic array, here was an Andalite device, probably designed by Seerow or one of his colleagues before the Yeerk betrayal, that used a dish as a primary component.

Even if I hadn’t gotten a decent look at it, the device’s usage would be obvious from the fact that a Yeerk was inside the bowl, speaking to the Prince and another Andalite who was projected on a holo-screen. I didn’t recognise him, but he was obviously high up in the military or the Electorate (because they’re definitely not the same thing. No sir! Definitely not!), as both the Prince and even the Yeerk were acting quite deferential.

Listening in, the hologram Andalite was an Intelligence Officer, probably Apex Level by the treatment he received, and the Yeerk was Visser Seventeen. Two high ranking officers on either side of the war, talking about the optimal strategy for bringing the war to a close, with them coming out on top on both sides.

They weren’t actually interested in peace, they simply wanted to join forces and conquer the rest of the galaxy using their combined might. Fucking shit. Because why would you try to make things better when you can make them exponentially worse?

Well the Prince here was in charge of coordinating planetary defences; turning them against anyone fleeing the coup and letting in their yeerk allies. He also had the names of several collaborators on his computer. As soon as the meeting was over, the Prince stashed the Visser behind a false panel and left for his non-traitorous duties, leaving me to get into his computer, which was pretty easy since I’d had a crash course in hacking Andalite technology, guided by my tech perks. I put all the info I could find onto a data chip and booked it back to my own cubicle-sized quarters.

An hour later and I was informed that my commanding officer had received a message that my mother had passed on and I would be given three days leave. I thanked him and asked for privacy to perform the grieving ritual.

* * *

 

I should’ve known that faking my fake mother’s death was too easy. On the shuttle down to the planet, two warriors were riding with me and I could telepathically hear the private thought-speak conversation between them and the pilot. They were going to abduct me right off the landing pad, the pilot had already called ahead and organised a camera malfunction with their planetside associates.

Sucks to be them.

I excused myself to use the onboard facilities when we were coming into orbit, demorphed, and froze them just as we landed. The pilot barely heard their thought-speak warning before I had him frozen as well. Not sure what the black bag team that was supposed to pick me up thought about the Andalite-cicles I left for them to find, because I was outta there like a bat outta hell.

Almost literally in fact, since there was a pseudo-mammalian bat/monkey thing about the size of a toddler called a parrabin that lives near the moon station.

 

* * *

 

It took a little bit to get in to see anyone high up in the Electorate, but by the end of the day I’d managed to brute force my way into a meeting with Esgarrouth-Valad-Sofor, one of the biggest Andalite bigwigs with authority over part of the military, and convinced him to look at the data I’d gathered on the upcoming coup.

I had to explain how I got it, so I told him of the suspicious activities of the Prince, and how I morphed an insect to investigate his chambers. I was reprimanded for spying on a superior officer and hacking his personal computer, but wasn’t punished because of the intel I had brought to light. I guess militaries are militaries everywhere.

 

Even a couple days after the coup had quietly been foiled, the Ellimist still hadn’t sprung me from my moon station position, so I guessed that the Escafil device was still in danger of falling into Yeerk hands. I kept Lillie and myself on high alert, only this time we were scanning every ship both in and out.

It took another two weeks after the general, albeit hushed, excitement about the attempted coup had finally quieted down, when an older model scientific craft requested unscheduled departure clearance, stating an invaluable discovery of unusual minerals on a remote planet several light-years away.

This sort of thing wasn’t unheard of, there’d been two other ships on similar missions that’d left during my stay here, but it was the only one since the foiled coup which meant that Lillie and I volunteered to be on the party to inspect the vessel for contraband and stolen goods.

At first glance everything seemed above board, it passed the standard checks that the two real Andalite warriors made, but I could hear the pilot in private thought-speak with one of the scientists, he was worried about how close Lillie was to something and the scientist was reassuring him about the security of... oh you are kidding me.

«It feels somewhat warm in here,» I said, fanning my face with my many-fingered hand, «is your thermal regulation unit functioning properly?»

As I spoke I waved an eyestalk towards the vent next to Lillie, one of the few spots that don’t get checked as part of a routine inspection. She popped it open with her nimble fingers and found the Escafil device secreted inside with a couple of small Andalite computer discs.

<Oh my! What’s this?> she said with almost genuine surprise.

The pilot and two of the three scientists went for handheld shredders, but I easily squeezed off two shots from my own and had my tail blade at the pilot’s throat before the stunned scientists even hit the ground.

The third scientist was obviously a dupe, just brought along for verisimilitude, as he practically fainted at the sudden violence and immediately surrendered  

 

* * *

 

After they were escorted back to the base, Lillie and I were uplifted from the regular flow of time as the Ellimist appeared before us, fading into the foreground.

“That was well done. I had suspected you may have been tempted to try to force a conclusion to this matter.” He spoke as serenely as ever, still in the guise of a kindly older man, but his words made me bristle.

“There was no way to force it without it going poorly,” I said, trying to keep my voice level but an annoyed quaver still snuck through. “The only way we could’ve stopped it without waiting around for clues and evidence would’ve been to take over ourselves, and that would have been counterproductive.”

I took a breath as Lillie put a calming hand on my arm and nodded fo her, letting her know I was alright.

“As it stands, we completed a significant task that you set, and as such I’d like to ask for a significant reward. I want a small pool of Yeerks.”

The Ellimist looked more than a little taken aback by my request. I was a little surprised at that, I kind of assumed that Chan would’ve known what I wanted and informed him. Still, it was pretty nice to see the shock on his assumed face.

“Not just any Yeerks though,” I continued, “I could get a bunch of regular mind slugs anytime I wanted. No, I want a pool of proto-Yeerks. The pre-sapient ancestral worms who first started crawling into Gedd ears. I’m assuming there’s a pool that can be put into my Warehouse that would otherwise be destroyed in a natural disaster, thus preserving the timeline in all important ways.”

The Ellimist pursed his lips, clearly annoyed at what I was asking, but unable to refuse me since it was part of his deal that I could request a reasonable reward. For stopping a coup and preventing a massive loss on his side of the Game with Crayak, a minor hiccup in the far past that wouldn’t snowball into any temporal discontinuities seemed like it was fairly reasonable.

The Ellimist grudgingly agreed with me. He took me back a few billion years to the Yeerk home planet, to a small pool, about the size of a koi pond, filled with the Yeerk equivalent of Cro-Magnon. Looking up, I could see an approaching meteorite on the edge of the atmosphere, not very big, but big enough to take out this Yeerk pond and a few hundred kilometres beyond. It was frozen in place, just like everything else was. If it wasn’t, I’d’ve been incinerated and/or crushed within moments.

I scooped up as much of the Yeerk pond as I could with telekinesis, which was practically all of it, and slopped it all into a waiting stasis pod that automatically resized itself to fit it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do apologise for not updating sooner, it took a while for me to get into the right mindset to write again, and I had written myself into a corner here. Hopefully it was worth the wait, more will be coming sooner or later.


End file.
